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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



AN INTERPRETATION IN 

BIOGRAPHY 



BY 
DENTON J. SNIDER 



ST. LOUIS, MO. 

SIGMA PUBLISHING CO., 

210 PINE STREET 

(For sale by A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, Ills.) 



L45 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

DEC J 7 J 908 



fcinoolnianii 



COPYRK'.HT BY D. J. SnIDER, 1908. 



NlXON-.IoNES PrINTINO Co., 

2ir> Pink St., St. Louim 



BeCKTOLD .1- Co., BlNDEK^ 

210 Pink St., St. Loris 



CONTENTS 



Introduction page 

Meaning of Lincoln's Life ... 5-12 

Part First 

Lincoln's Apprenticeship .... 13-257 

Chapter First, 
Lincoln's Youth . . ... 20- 91 

Chapter Second. 

Drifting. ... ... 92-200 

Chapter Third. 

Getting Anchored 201-257 

(iii) 



IV cox TEXTS. 

Part Second. page 

Lincoln's National Call .... 258-515 

Chapter First, 
From State to Nation .... 269-305 

Chapter Second. 
Lincoln's Subsidence . . . . . 306-356 

Chapter Third, 
The National Choice 357-5 L5 

Part Third. 
Lincoln, the Nation's Executive, 516-575 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



introduction: 

President-elect Lincoln, while on his journey to 
the Capital for the purpose of being installed in the 
highest office of the Nation, felt prompted by the 
locality to make certain biographic remarks in an 
address before the Senate of New Jersey, at Tren- 
ton, a few days preceding his inauguration. These 
remarks show the formative power of biography 
over a human career, notably over that of Lincoln, 
and hint suggestively, even if unconsciously, the 
lines upon which his life is to be constructed by 
the biographer. Preluding what is to follow by 
these words of Lincoln, we shall emphasize his 
salient thoughts. Let us then, first of all, hear 
him speak. 

(5) 



6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

"May I be pardoned, if, upon this occasion, I 
mention that away back in my childhood, the 
earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold 
of a small book, such a one as few of the younger 
members have ever seen — ^Weems' Life of Wash- 
ington. I remember all the accounts there given 
of the battle-fields and struggles for the liberties 
of the country, and none fixed themselves upon my 
imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Tren- 
ton, New Jersey. . . . You all know, for you have 
been boys, how these early impressions last longer 
than any others. I recollect thinking then, boy 
even though I was, that there must have been 
something more than common that these men strug- 
gled for. I am exceedingly anxious that that 
thing, that something even 7?iore than national in- 
dependence, that something that held out a great 
promise to all the people of the world to all time to 
come — I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, 
the Constitution and the liberties of the people 
shall be perpetuated in accordance with the origi- 
nal idea for which that struggle was made, and I 
shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an hum- 
ble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of 
this, his almost chosen People, for perpetuating the 
object of that great struggle." 

Thus Lincoln in siglit of his mighty task, gives 
expression to the thoughts which well out of his 
heai1 in presence of the historic associations clus- 
tering around the New Jersey Capital. The chief 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

interest is that the speaker calls up Washington 
moving from the hour of his sorest trial forward to one 
of his greatest triumphs, and instinctively couples 
that time with the present. An epoch is dawning 
equal in magnitude to that of the Revolution, if 
not more colossal; very naturally Lincoln conjoins 
himself with Washington, and becomes aware of 
himself as the pilot to a new era, though with 
deep foreboding, as he looks out from Trenton upon 
the coming crisis. 

Nor should we omit to note those fleeting pro- 
phetic intimations, those fitful flashes of foresight 
and insight into the Supreme Oixler, of which Lin- 
coln in his high moments was capable, and which 
break forth through detached phrases from the 
hidden depths of his agitated soul. He is conscious 
that something is at stake "even more than na- 
tional independence ", which was the purpose of 
the old Revolution. He glimpses the far-extending, 
globe-encircling significance of the contest, involv- 
ing in its result "a great promise to all the people 
of the world to all time to come'" : surely a vast 
outlook, world-historical in the widest sense. And 
the biogra]^her must try to stretch his own soul 
to the vision of that promise seen by Lincoln, and 
to give to it some kind of utterance. Moreover 
Lincoln's great happiness is in feeling himself to be 
"an instrument in the hands of the Almighty" as 
well as an instrument in the hands "of this His 
almost chosen People", to bring about the grand 



8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

coming consummation of the ages. It may be per- 
mitted to draw forth into clearer outline from the 
shadowy twilight in which they float, these pro- 
phetic premonitions of Lincoln. We behold him 
forecasting his highest function, and placing him- 
self between the People (or Folk-Soul) on this side, 
and on that side the Almighty revealing Himself 
as the World-Spirit in the historic occurrences of 
Time. Thus he is truly an instrument of both 
these Powers, the one here below and the other 
there above ; a mediator we may name him between 
the Folk-Soul and the World-Spirit, both of which 
he, Abraham Lincohi, is born to harmonize, after 
they have produced just about the loudest and shrill- 
est dissonance of the century, if not of all history. 
So he speaks, not with the strictness of a logical 
formula but with the glimmering outline of a far- 
off forecast, discoursing first of that Power more 
than national, in supereminent sway over all the 
people of the world to all time to come, then of 
himself as instrument of it, who is to bring it down 
and realize it in this his almost chosen People, also 
an elemental Power in the enduring world-histor- 
ical act. Now it is these two Powers which will 
move through the life of Lincoln, and will be b}^ 
him interwoven, and indeed unified, making him 
truly the Great Man of his nation and epoch. To 
each of them we give its own name, that they be 
distinctly marked off and specially designated. In 
the People, from whom Liucoln springs, to whom 



INTRODUCTION 9 

he appeals, and for whom he acts, is working a 
character, an instinct, a Soul — we shall often call 
it the Folk-Soul. The almighty, providential 
Power, whom Lincoln often invokes under one 
name or other, who has his hand on human events, 
antl directs them to his end, we shall name the 
world-historical Spirit, or simply the World-Spirit. 
This last is "something more than common", 
"more than national", yet employing the particu- 
lar nation at a given time as its upbearer and 
realizcr for fulfilling a given stage of the supreme 
end of the World's History. Moreover between 
these two Powers there is a certain immediate re- 
lation, as w^hen we hear it said that in a great 
crisis Public Opinion (the Folk-Soul) bears directly 
the impress of the Genius of the Age (the World- 
Spirit) . In such a case, however, the Folk needs 
a leader in word and action, voicing its dumb as- 
piration and bringing it to realize in deeds the 
decree of the supernal Power whose potency it 
feels and whose end it carries out. Such a leader 
for our Nation in its pivotal crisis was Lincoln, 
mediating, as we designate the relation, this par- 
ticular American Folk-Soul of ours, with the uni- 
versal World-Spirit, the Prime Mover in and over 
all History, 

Another fact should be taken out of the forego- 
ing bit of a speech and dwelt upon with due atten- 
tion : Lincoln had read during his early youth in 
the frontier cabin of his parents the life of George 



10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: 

Washington by M. L. Weems, who, we learn from 
the title-page, was "formerly rector of Mount 
Vernon parish ", where was located the well-known 
residence of the Father of his Country. That book 
had gone deep into Lincoln's soul and had stayed 
with him through life, not only furnishing an ideal 
of manhood and moulding his character, but also 
showing him the way to reach the popular heart. 
For Weems was a story-teller, an anecdotist, yea 
a myth-maker, or at least a myth-gatherer, weav- 
ing around the name of Washington many a won- 
derful legend. Such for instance, was the marvel- 
ous dream of Washington's mother (with interpre- 
tation by Weems), and the hero's providential 
escapes from his foes, the Indians and the British, 
the whole being garnished with apt allusions to 
Scripture and even to Homer. In the same book is 
found the most popular of all American folk-tales, 
the story of the Little Hatchet with its moral cli- 
max: "Father, I can't tell a lie". This story, 
Weems says, was taken down from the lips of "an 
excellent lady ", of old the depository and trans- 
mitter of folk-lore. Deeply educative was the 
book for the almost schoolless boy reading in the 
night by the fire of a back-log; even then he was 
getting ready for his task, and he now recognizes 
the fact, as he looks rearward into his past, una- 
voidably connecting himself with Washington, 
wh(M"(nn most of his countrymen have since fol- 
lowed him. It is true that there is a striking dif- 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

ference between the high-toned, well-educated, 
dignified Mrginia gentleman and the awkward, 
self-made backwoodsman of the North-West. The 
one represented the Right of Revokition and suc- 
ceeded ; the other represented the Wrong of Revo- 
kition and succeeded. The career of the first led 
primarily to separation and won it; the career of 
the second led primarily to union and won it. Still 
both sprang from the same Mrginia, though at dif- 
ferent removes ; the one may be called the son and 
the other the grandson of the Old Commonwealth. 
The triumphant end of Washington's war was 
Yorktown^ the triumphant end of Lincoln's war 
was Appomattox, both places being in the same 
general locality of the same State, Mrginia. 

Rector Weems thus heroizes Washington for his 
People and writes a unique book, though running 
somewhat in the Plutarchian mythologic vein and 
breaking out into dramatic dialogue upon tempt- 
ing occasions. Such a biography is at present 
hardly possible, perchance not desirable, though 
to our forefathers it had unquestionably its mes- 
sage. Lincoln drew from it deep joys and deeper 
training of the spirit. His own life was enwreathed, 
particularly while he was President, in masses of 
fable ever sprouting afresh from the Folk-Soul, he 
being himself the People's own fabulist. This the 
biographer cannot neglect, though with it must be 
given the profounder significance of Lincoln's 
careerj truly world-historical. 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Another utterance may be cited, concordant 
with the foregoing statement, showing to whom 
Lincoln's thoughts reverted as he beheld and 
brooded over the coming trials of his country. His 
fellow-citizens of Springfield assembled for a part- 
ing salutation when he set out to assume his Presi- 
dential duties, with the cloud of Civil War already 
darkening the Southern horizon. He bade them 
farewell, breathing a sigh of premonition and giv- 
ing a glimpse of that great man of the past in 
whose presence he seemed to live during those try- 
ing days: "I now leave, not knowing when or 
whether ever I may return, imth a task before me 
greater than that which rested upon Washington^ 



part jfirst. 

When it began to be foreshadowed about 1859- 
60 that Abraham Lincohi was the coming man of 
the supreme national emergency, a great desire 
was felt to know how he got to be. Even to his 
friends the hues of his early life ran back into a cloud 
which he seemed unwilling to disperse. Two 
little bits of autobiography were wrung from him 
by the necessities of the approaching campaign. 
From the first we take the following extract which 
gives a glimpse of his early opportunities for 

(13) 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

education in the backwoods of Indiana. (Works 
of Lincoln, by Nicolay & Hay, I, p. 596.) 

'There were some schools so-called, but no 
qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 
reading writing and ciphering to the rule of three. 
If a straggler supposed to understand Latin 
happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was 
looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely 
nothing to excite ambition for education." Still 
we shall see that Lincoln learned from these 
frontier teachers the elements and the educative 
instrumentalities of all culture. He thus had the 
chance of making further progress by means of 
the printed page, though "I have not been to 
school since. The little advance I now have upon 
this store of education, I have picked up from time 
to time under the pressure of necessity." Somewhat 
too disparaging is the tone of these confessions, as 
Lincoln contrasted himself with Seward and other 
college-bred men in public life. But he had oppor- 
tunities for training which they had not, and 
which are by no means to be omitted from any 
complete account of his life's discipline for his 
mighty task. 

In the other bit of autobiography (Works, 
I, p. 639), written in the third person, for use during 
the campaign of 1860, he returns to the defects of 
his early education: "Abraham now thinks that 
the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount 
to one year. He was never in a college or academy 



LINCOLN'S APPRENTICESHIP. 15 

as a student, and never inside a college or academy 
building till since he had a law license. What he 
has in the way of education, he has picked up. 
After he was twenty-three he studied English 
Grammar — imperfectly of course, but so as to 
speak and write as he now docs. He studied and 
nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he 
was a member of Congress," that is, after he was 
forty years old. Through these simple modest 
paragraphs pee})s out the uncjuenchablc aspiration 
of the man; he educates himself and graduates 
from a school of which he is the only man of his 
time who holds or can hold a diploma. Now that 
school with its curriculum is just what our reader, 
we hope, wishes to hear about in this book of ours. 
Still another precious autobiographic morsel 
concerning Lincoln we can catch up from the first 
pages of his Boswoll, Hcrndon. Just after the 
Chicago Convention of 18G0, a reporter by the 
name of Scripps, called upon him for some details 
of his life. Lincoln at first shrank from the idea, 
exclaiming, "Why, Scripps, it is a great piece of 
folly to make anything out of me or my early life. 
It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and 
that sentence you will find in Gray's Elegy, 

The short and simple annals of the poor. 

That's my life, and that is all that you or anyone 
else can make of it." 

And yet the life of Lincoln before ISOO has 



16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

become that part of him which the People love 
to hang over and ponder upon in a kind of in- 
satiable wonder. More than any other recorded 
career it reveals the possibilities of the American 
man rising from the humblest to the highest 
position in the land. How did he do it? The 
reader clutches and caresses every little fact try- 
ing to coax out of it some brief whisper of the 
lurking secret. Lincoln's education certainly 
flowed not in the ordinary channels made by the 
stream of transmitted culture. Still he had an 
education unique of its kind and preparing him 
supremely for his world-historical function. Now 
this education of Lincoln, being quite different 
from what is usually included under that term and 
reaching considerably beyond th(! usual school-age, 
we shall designate specially as his Apprenticeship, 
which indeed covers the first thirty-three years of 
his life, from his birth till his marriage. And this 
considerable stretch of human existence has like- 
wise its lesser turns and tides, which the biog- 
rapher should not fail to trace in passing. 

Lincoln the apprentice, therefore, we are to 
follow in the present period, tracking him as far 
as possible along the main lines of his spirit's early 
flowering. AVe arc to behold in it a time of pre- 
liminary training for his work; we can hardly leave 
out of view whither he is going, and under what 
guidance. Easy enough is it ordinarily to tell to 
what school, college, university this or that dis- 



LINCOLN'S APPRENTICESHIP. 17 

tinguished man went, what he studied and who 
were his teachers, in the beaten road of academic 
disciphne. But all this becomes just the difficult 
thing to speak out and even to find in the case of 
Lincoln, who has and even makes his own curric- 
ulum while he goes along. He creates his college 
course as he lives, and the biographer must create 
it after him from the little and few fragments which 
have been fished out of his youth's fountain of 
oblivion. His chief instruction does not take place 
in a building devoted to education; Lincoln's 
school-house is the world, more particularly his 
institutional environment, which he is to absorb 
more completely and to become acquainted with 
more intimately than any other man of his time. 
The People was his instructor, and he learned the 
lesson so well that he in the end became the in- 
structor of the People. 

We may say, then, that during the first period of 
his life Lincoln was the apprentice of the Folk- 
Soul, especially as the latter manifested itself in 
the Northwestern portion of the United States. 
Primarily he is of it, one with it, pulsing respon- 
sively to all its throbs; an embryo we may regard 
him, not yet consciously born of his institutional 
mother, even if lustily struggling for birth and the 
light of Heaven. During all these years, a full 
generation indeed, young Lincoln is but a germinal 
unit, an atom of the vast protoplasmic mass called 
the Multitude, from which, through the discipline 



18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

of life, he is to differentiate himself and rise up to 
true individuality. This concentrates into one 
burning point the People, who thus in their Great 
Man can see themselves by their own light. Through 
such individuals a Nation, if it can produce them, 
need never die, being able to re-constitute and to 
re-make itself in the pinch of destiny 

The apprentice Lincoln — so we may name him 
for the nonce — we are now to see in the workshop 
or school of the Folk-Soul, learning its ways, how 
it looks at things, and particularly how it deals 
with its own institutions. He has to get widely 
and well acquainted with his own around him — 
the hardest branch in the curriculum of life. More- 
over he has not merely to commune deeply with 
the Folk-Soul, but he must learn to talk to it in its 
own dialect. Thus it understands him when he 
speaks to it, and it responds to him, often with a 
tremendous acclaim. On the other hand he under- 
stands it, probably better than any other American 
has ever succeeded in doing. Still all this he has to 
learn, and this is the theme of his Apprenticeship. 
Anecdote, fable, law, politics, even love are some 
of the elements surging through the long discipline, 
often chaotic in outer appearance, but inwardly 
attuned to one harmonious end, if our ear can be 
brought to catch the music. 

Here, however, we shall just hint what the 
future is fully to reveal. This A]ij:)rcnticeship is not 
the finality of the man, but is only the means, 



LINCOLN'S APPRENTICESHIP. 19 

the road leading him forward to his supreme voca- 
tion. As he himself declared, he is "the instru- 
ment" in the hands of the Almighty and of the 
People to fulfil the grand behest of the Ages. Still 
he has to have preparation and a good deal of it. 
This Apprenticeship is, accordingly, but a part or 
stage of the total Lincoln. Nevertheless it has 
its own process and its own law governing its some- 
what diversified and scattered occurrences. These 
are what we shall have to study, seeking to put 
them into some kind of inner relation and order, 
which brings to light their psychical movement, and 
thus reveals the soul itself in its unfolding. This 
Apprenticeship, we may say in advance, will show 
Lincoln in three stages or chapters of his si)irit's 
evolution towards its supreme end: first, his 
youth with its schooling at home under the paternal 
roof, then his going forth and experiencing the 
world in a time of drifting, finally his getting 
established in State, Community and Family, or 
his becoming institutionalized. With this last 
phase his Apprenticeship is rounded out to fullness, 
and the Apprentice passes on to the next great 
sweep of his life's occurrences driving forward 
towards his goal. 



CHAPTER FIRST. 

Xtncoln'0 !3outb. 

The boundary of Lincoln's youthful period we 
may draw through the year when he becomes of 
age, and quits parental guidance for the direct ex- 
perience of the world. He reaches a new individ- 
uality, being now his own master; a kind of second 
birth it is, bringing him into another, yet inde- 
pendent life. From babyhood to manhood we 
conceive Lincoln's youth to range, dropping upon 
his path many an important lesson which he will 
never forget. In his tenth year the tenderest tie 
of his young existence was snapped in twain by 
the death of his mother, which stamped or helped 
to stamp upon his soft heart and even upon his 
face lines of an undying sorrow. 

Accordingly Lincoln, till ho was twenty-one years 
old, remained at home, and received the domestic 
training of his father's family. It was a shifting 
unsettled household, yet had an inner life over 
which the two women, the mother and the step- 
mother, successively presided, giving to it in the 
humblest siu'roundings a real nobility of character 
and depth of feeling. This training of the home 
through his two mothers developed and purified 
Lincoln's emotional life, so that his native human 
sympathy was always one of his mightiest powers. 
To be sure he; was originally gifted with a great re- 
(20) 



CHAPTER FIRST— LIXCOLWS YOUTH. 21 

sponsivc heart, which nevertheless might have 
been dwarfed or pei'vcrted had it not been mi- 
folded and ennobled by the maternal instinct 
moulding the child-soul in the home. 

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12th, 1809, 
three miles from the little town of Hodgensville, 
in a locality which was then included in Hardin 
County, Kentucky, but which now belongs to La 
Rue County. His parents were named Thomas 
and Nancy Lincoln, whose social position was that 
of the poor class of Southerners. The son de- 
clared in a brief sketch of himself (in 1859) that 
"my parents were both born in Virginia, of un- 
distinguished families — second families perhaps I 
should say." Wherein we feel the unspoken con- 
trast with the first families of Virginia, so famous, 
to which his people did not belong. 

We have already seen how Lincoln shrank from 
his own biography in his response to reporter 
Scripps just after his nomination for the Presi- 
dency. Of course he could not and did not appre- 
ciate the import of his own life up to 1860, when he 
made the before cited statements about himself. 
And he was then seemingly correct in his judgment. 
The succeeding five years are to bring out the man 
and to set him down in the very focus of the World's 
History, which will throw a search-light into eveiy 
little nook of his previous humble existence. Those 
last years of his were the realization of what lay 
in him, and revealed him ec^ual to the mightiest 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

crisis of the age. So mankind must find out how 
he came to be what he was, and will persist in pry- 
ing into every dark corner of his earlier days to see 
if it can not discover the clew of his genesis. That 
inquisitive reporter of 18G0 was but the brief pre- 
lude of a long line of biographers running down 
into the present and shooting out many a bud for 
the future. 

A word may be inserted here upon the scope of 
the present work, which does not attempt to add 
new details of Lincoln's life, but to order and inter- 
pret old facts, those already well-knowm and col- 
lected by numerous investigators. Nor is there 
intended a critique of the extensive Lincoln 
literature, though such a work would be timely, if 
done by the right hand in the right way. Within 
all the outer occurrences of his life we seek to see 
and to utter the spiritual or psychical evolution of 
Lincoln unfolding in and through the institutions 
of his land, which he not only maintained but also 
transformed, thereby putting them in line with 
the movement of the World's Histor3^ 

It is well known that Lincoln often reflected 
upon, yea, brooded over the mystery of his origin 
and destiny. He seemed unable to account for 
himself from his parentage, and refused to give 
any detailed report of his early life. Still the chief 
facts of it have been hunted up and garnered in 
print by diligent incjuirers. Along the track of 
his youthful days he left a luminous record in the 



ANCESTRAL. 23 

memories of living men with whom he was asso- 
ciated, and who have been sought out in their 
obscure haunts like hidden treasures, that they 
might yield a few nuggets of golden information 
concerning Abraham Lincoln. Likewise his re- 
mote kindred have been exhumed, if not from 
their graves, at least from old buried records, in 
order that the line of his descent may be traced, 
perchance to discover the secret of his genius. For 
the deep necessity of the time is to see the great 
man and the great event evolving out of their 
germ, this present century of ours being truly the 
century of Evolution. 

So it belongs in the present biographic theme 
to follow carefully the youthful steps of Lincoln in 
his first period of Apprenticeship to the Folk- 
Soul, and to keep meantime in view the task for 
which he is under training, possibly with an occa- 
sional glimpse of the Power which has set him such 
a task and is constraining him to such an Appren- 
ticeship. 

I. 

Ancestral. 

It is stated that the American ancestral chain 
of Lincoln starts about 1G38 with the coming of 
Samuel Lincoln to Hingham, Massachusetts, from 
Norwich, England, some eighteen years after the 
landing of the Pilgrims. At this date the mother- 
country was getting into deeper and deeper trouble 



24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

with her king, and many of her sons, foreseeing 
the civil conflict, were looking towards America as 
a refuge from oppression and as a bulwark for the 
maintenance of their political and religious liberty. 
What directly caused the emigration of Samuel 
Lincoln is not known; but we may feel a throb of 
the movement of the time in the prohibition of 
1637, in which the Puritans were forbidden by the 
government to leave Englantl, so great was their 
flight to the New World. Still they continued to 
escape to the promised land in the West regardless 
of the prohibition. 

If the first American progenitor of Abraham 
Lincoln was a fugitive from his native country for 
the sake of greater hberty (a matter probable but 
not verifietl), we find a later ancestor separating 
from his New England home and settling in Penn- 
sylvania, Berks County, probably for a similar 
reason. We read that these early Lincolns were 
Quakers, and there seems to have been a second 
hegira to the paradise of William Penn and Quaker- 
dom. It is well known that the Puritans did not 
tolerate any heresy (except their own), and that 
they pei'secuted the heretical Quakers, who, as men 
of peace, naturally took to flight. Still a branch 
of the Lincoln family remained in Massachusetts, 
and one of its eminent members met there our 
historic Abraham Lincoln in 1848, over two 
hundred years after the landing of their supposedly 
connnon ancestor. 



ANCESTRAL. 25 

The next step in this ancestral march of descent 
and of migration was taken from Pennsylvania to 
Virginia, to which State a John Lincoln moved 
aboirt 1750 and settled in Rockingham County. 
Here the Revolutionary War overtook the family; 
one of the sons of John Lincoln, Lsaac by name, 
enlisted, and was a lieutenant in a Mrginia regi- 
ment at the surrender of Yorktown. Four other 
sons are known by name, but they seem to have 
held themselves aloof from the great issue of the 
age, probably in accord with their Quaker faith. 
Moreover, their look was turned westward, they 
were by nature pioneers, and had to take another 
flight from civilization to the woods. The quiet 
idyllic life of the solitary Quaker settlement on the 
remote border of their advancing race seems to 
have been their ideal. At any rate the family in 
its manifold offshoots throughout the Southern 
and Western States, never furnished any public 
men of note, with the one colossal exception, 
though the Massachusetts branch produced a 
number of distinguished citizens. 

Still this dip of the family into Virginia's in- 
stitutional life was an important event of its histor3^ 
The migratory stream at that time was turning 
southward, as it later bent back northward when 
the slavery question began to make itself felt. In 
the middle of the eighteenth century, Mrginia was 
altogether the largest, richest, and most influential 
of the American Commonwealths. Its population 



26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

then was nearly as great as that of New York and 
Massachusetts combined; the chief seaport on the 
Atlantic coast was Norfolk, though Charleston 
might dispute the claim. Boston and New York 
lagged to the rear. Also in Virginia at that time 
were the statesmen of the rising nation, the 
moulders of its institutions. How that Common- 
wealth ever brought forth so many and such 
excellent public-men is still a problem which no 
historian of Virginia has yet solved or even fully 
presented. And this suggests her limitation; she 
seems unable to write the history she herself has 
made; her practical gift has far surpassed her 
reflective. Very different is New England, which 
has the moral, self-examining, critical spirit rather 
than the institutional, and has produced a wonder- 
ful stream of preachers, writers and talkers — an 
output by no means to be neglected, even if its 
character be somewhat provincial. 

Here it must not fail to be noted that Mrginia 
then was the; main center from which rayed out 
the new States of the Union. She had or claimed 
the vast territory lying to the North-west, to the 
West directly, and in part to the South-west, till 
the Mississippi. Thus she was in area by far the 
largest of the Old Thirte(>n. Truly she possessed 
not only the domain but the ability to be the State- 
builder for the future. This was in fact just her 
supreme function, deeply in accord with her 
institutional character. Really she was the only 



ANCESTRAL. 27 

one of the old Commonwealths that had such a 
transcendent gift in good working order, as is 
shown by the Constitution of the United States, 
which was substantially her product. Still the 
other Commonwealths participated in her excel- 
lence, and recognized her position. So it comes 
that the stream of migration already mentioned 
flowed from the north into Virginia and then passed 
on to the young States after a baptism, short or long, 
in her spirit. Thus she radiated new States to- 
wards all points of the Western land of promise. 

Of this great movement of the people, the Lincoln 
family was but one example, one small trunk of 
pioneers, though very fruitful, shooting branches 
into NorthCarolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, 
Illinois, in general all around the horizon of the 
West; The curious fact has been brought to light 
that another Quaker family, the Boones, intertwine 
with the Lincolns in their migrations, the members 
of each branch frequently intermarrying on the 
way. Both started from Pennsylvania, Berks 
County, and spread southward and westward, till 
Daniel Boone, the most famous of all pioneers, and 
deemed the typical one, left a long trail of adven- 
tures reaching from \'irginia, through Tennessee 
and Kentucky, into Missouri, where he died. Him 
the old Greek would have heroized into a Hercules. 
Taking up again our thread of the migratory 
Lincolns, we note that the next act is the passing 
of one of them from Virginia (Rockingham County) 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART FIRST. 

into Kentucky (Jefferson County). The name of 
this Lincohi was Abraham, a name common in the 
family with other Hebrew names of the Old and 
New Testaments — by the light of which fact we 
may cast a glimpse into the chief and perhaps only 
book which the household possessed or read. This 
Abraham Lincoln arrived at his new home about 
1780, turning away from the British invasion of 
his State and following the stream of emigrants 
which poured over the Alleghenies, or floated down 
the Ohio River in great family boats towards the 
new West. Already in 1780 Louisville is said to 
have had several hundred people, and in 1784 
Kentucky's population was estimated at 30,000. 
Ohio was not yet much sought, its time came later, 
after that of Kentucky. 

This Abraham Lincoln was our Abraham's 
paternal grandfather, who owned an extensive 
estate, and seemingly brought with him from 
Virginia the ambition to be of the landed gentry. 
His life came to an untimely close by an Indian's 
bullet. His three sons were saved, only one of 
whom can we take up hereafter into this ancestral 
line, which has been throwing off Lincolns into 
obscurity for nearly a century and a half. 

Let the reader, however, note with due emphasis 
that migratory dip of people from the North into 
Virginia, ere they pass on in their movement to 
the West. About this time \'irginia was at her 
greatest, being the representative of an idea which 



ANCESTRAL. 29 

must be deemed not only national but world- 
historical. More than any other of the old com- 
monwealths, she shows herself to bo the mother of 
States as well as of Presidents; she is verily the 
State-producing State before the Federal Union, 
which indeed derives that gift from her both in 
principle and in act. And another matter must 
not be forgotten. Virginia's greatest men of this 
period were hostile to slavery and sought to make 
her a Free-State, and actually did make her pro- 
duce Free-States, as we see by her act of ceding the 
North Western Territory in 1783, as well as by the 
ordinance of 1787. Still she also produced Slave- 
States, and her dualism was imparted to the then 
formed Union. 

Now it is this dualism of the Union as Free- 
State producing and as Slave-State producing, 
which our Abraham Lincoln, whom we may deem 
Virginia's grandson, will grapple with and over- 
come. Such is indeed the deepest thought of his 
career, which he seemed to inherit from the great 
men of Virginia contemporary with his grand- 
parents. Under his leadership the New States of 
the West which Virginia made free, will sweep 
back nearly a century later, and take the chief 
part in making her free, and thus realizing her own 
original idea of the State as creative of Free States 
— an idea which specially animated the earlier 
career of Jefferson. 



30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

II. 

Thomas Lincoln. 

Such was the name of the third son of grand- 
father Abraham Lincoln. As a httle boy Thomas 
saw his parent slain, and then saw the slayer slain 
in turn by his eldest brother called Mordecai. The 
bloody feud between the Indian and the white man 
thus weaves its crimson strand into the- ancestral 
line of the Lincolns. The story is told of the little 
fellow standing beside his father's dead body in 
great danger of the tomahawk till the shot from 
his brother's rifle brought down the red assassin. 
The tragedy of the frontier is a part of our Abraham 
Lincoln's inheritance, and we shall see him later 
responding at once to a call for soldiers in the 
Black Hawk War against the Indians of the North- 
west. As late as 1854, in a letter, Lincoln alluded 
to the fate of his grandfather as "the legend more 
strongly than all others impressed upon my mind 
and memory." 

Thomas Lincoln seems to have had no share in 
the paternal estate, of which the chief heir was the 
eldest son, according to the aristocratic law of 
primogeniture. The boy was left to shift for him- 
self, and he became shiftless. His people allowed 
him to grow up in ignorance; it is said that his 
first wife taught him to write his name in an 
awkward scribble. Though he did not receive 
any of his family's property, he did inherit its 



THOMAS LINCOLN. 31 

migratoiy spirit, which in him took the form of a 
rover flitting about from place to place. The 
settling down into one spot seemed to be what un- 
settled him. He learned a trade, that of carpenter, 
though his life was mostly passed upon a farm, or 
rather a number of farms in Kentucky, Indiana 
and Illinois. He died in 1851, but he lived long 
enough to see the lirst eminence of his son as lawyer 
and Congressman. 

It should be said, however, that Thomas Lincoln 
was not a bad man. He seems to have been quite 
free from the excesses of the backwoodsman. He 
was not a drunkard, though he would take his turn 
at the bottle. He was religious, but the borderer 
demanded in his religion a strong stimulant, 
worship was to intoxicate him like a dram of 
whiskey. The chief indictment against him is 
that he not only gave no encouragement to his 
boy's strong aspiration, but rather suppressed it, 
wishing to keep his progeny in liis own narrow, 
hopeless life of ignorance and poverty. Strangely 
after the mother it was a step-mother that nursed 
the ambition of the boy, appreciating his talent 
from the start, and giving him opportunities for 
study. Thomas Lincoln certainly showed that 
peculiar paralysis which has been so often remarked 
in the poor whites of the South, and which seemed 
to attack specially the younger sons of the gentility, 
who were too well-born to work and too poor to be 
idle. 



32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

It is recorded that Thomas Lincoln, after having 
wooed without success Miss SalUe Bush, a young 
lady of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, married in 1806 
Miss Nancy Hanks, the future mother of the 
historic Abraham Lincoln, in whose destiny both 
these women have been interwoven, both being 
thereby crowned with an immortal renown. Recent 
investigation claims to show that man and wife 
were first cousins, and that they were of a higher 
class in the community than has been generally 
supposed, than even their own son, Lincoln him- 
self, supposed. Still we have to think that both 
parties belonged to the humbler class of the South, 
though the wife was the superior of the husband in 
education, in ability, and in aspiration. Her 
genealogy has been traced, and her first American 
ancestor, of English origin, settled in Plymouth, 
Massachusetts in 1699. Thence her family passed 
to Pennsylvania, as it belonged to the Quaker 
communion; next it is heard of in Virginia, from 
which it flowed with the great stream of migration 
into Kentucky. Thus the forefathers' march of 
the Hankses runs strikingly parallel to that of the 
Lincolns, though wholly independent till the two 
come together in Virginia and then in Central 
Kentucky, where they intermingle and intermarry 
producing at last our Lincoln. 

So we conceive these two ancestral lines, the 
Lincolns and the Hankses, starting back in Old 
England apart in time and place, flowuig over 



THOMAS LINCOLN. 33 

the ocean to New England, and then sweeping out 
of the old States of the North into Virginia, whence 
they both pass westward to the new, to the derived 
States of the Union, These, however, were only 
typical instances of a great popular movement 
seeking to find its way to the future seat of the 
Nation. A voiceless instinct led them on, turning 
them not directly to and across the Ohio River, 
but first into Virginia to take a course of that 
institutional training which prepared them to be 
State-builders for the new Union. This migratory 
tide started many years before the Revolutionary 
War, and continued many years after it, lasting, 
perhaps a century or more, till Virginia decisively 
and finally refused to emancipate herself from the 
black curse, which emancipation all her early and 
greatest sons advocated. ,Then she turned its 
defender, its chief exponent and supporter. That 
was the time when she ceased to bear free institu- 
tions and Great Men, ceased to be the mother of 
States and of Presidents, and became the mother of 
slaves for the cotton plantations of the extreme 
South. Not reproachfully but regretfully do we 
set down the record which has in it one of the most 
striking lessons to be found in the history of the 
whole country. Already we have groped for the 
cause of Virginia's fertility in Great Men, but now 
there rises the equally suggestive question why 
she lost her grandly creative power, passing into 
a spell of decadence, which culminated in a revolt 



34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

from the Union, of which she was the intellectual 
parent, and in an alienation from those Free-States 
of the West which she had once mothered with such 
loving foresight. It would seem that her institu- 
tional spirit and her leadership migrated with the 
progressive migration westward, when she made 
"the great refusal." 

Let us, however, return to our young married 
couple, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, who have 
started out in life at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, 
with their first housekeeping. Of their early days 
we catch hardly any suggestive glimpse unless it 
be that picture of the young wife teaching her 
rather unambitious husband to scrawl his name. 
It has been handed down that he worked fitfully 
at his trade, that of a carpenter, but he readily 
could turn his hand to other kinds of labor. He 
lived in a log cabin, as did the majority of his 
fellow-townsmen at that period, and was inclined 
to take life easy, seeking no job but letting it come 
to him in its own good time. He soon felt that he 
must change his locality, and we find him after a 
couple of years on a little farm in Hardin County, 
Kentucky. The soil was poor, the husbandman 
thriftless ; the result was that the young family sank 
down into a more forlorn condition than ever 
before. Here in the very night of hope a male 
child was born, February 12th, 1809. This child 
was our Abraham Lincoln. We may well think 
that the mother, from the deep depression super- 



THE NEW MIGRATION. 35 

induced by her environment, stamped upon her 
offspring as her fadeless birthmark that constitu- 
tional melancholy which everybody saw in his 
features and felt in his character, 

III. 

The New Migration. 

With the appearance of this infant coming into 
the world, if not in a manger, at least under almost 
as lowly circumstances, the light of the present 
biography has risen, to be followed till its setting. 
The boy's first playmate was his little sister, nearly 
two years older than himself, who was born during 
the stay at Elizabethtown. • 

Thomas Lincoln, Hke the true rover, soon felt that 
prosperity was not where he was, but somewhere 
else, and must now be chased down for good. 
When his boy was about four years old, the father 
moved to another farm some fifteen miles distant, 
where fortune was again wooed. But success 
attended him in the new venture just as little as in 
the old ones, and for the same reason. Nomadic 
Tom Lincoln belongs really nowhere, and so he 
cannot find out where he belongs. 

An important step may be chronicled during the 
stay at this farm. The boy Abraham, with his 
sister was sent to his first school. He has himself 
transmitted the names of his two earliest teachers, 
Zachariah Riney and Caleb Hazel. Only names 



36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

they are to us now, dim ghosts of wandering 
pedagogues on the frontier, but from these itin- 
erant masters young Lincoln first began the rudi- 
ments of the famous three discipHnes — reacUng, 
with possibly a little writing and ciphering. This 
started him so that he could help himself, and 
tradition states that he was a very capable learner 
at this early time. It has also been handed down 
that his mother taught him what she knew and 
encouraged him, telling him the stories of the 
Bible as well as the transmitted folk-tales of her 
people. With good reason she seems to have 
turned her teaching ambition from her husband to 
her son. 

Having failed on his second farm also, Thomas 
Lincoln began to think of leaving Kentucky. He 
had heard of the fertile and untaken territory 
across the Ohio River in the State of Indiana. As 
to his motives in making the change, we may cite 
his son's statement: "This removal was partly 
on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the 
difficulty in land titles in Kentucky." Lincoln 
gave this account of his father in 1860, after his 
nomination for the Presidency, to be used in a 
campaign life of himself. Hence the allusion to 
slavery is probably made as prominent as the truth 
permitted. The difficulty in land titles seems to 
have been this : Thomas Lincoln bought his farms 
on credit, giving promissory notes, secured by deeds 
of trust. The notes fell due and were not paid ; the 



THE NEW MIGRATION. 37 

land reverted to the original owner and Thomas 
Lincoln had to vacate the premises. Such was 
"the difficulty in land titles," present not only in 
Kentucky but everywhere. The son could not 
well give any detailed explanation in a campaign 
document, and so passed it over with a small 
euphemism. 

The second cause assigned, that of slavery, has 
been sometimes emphasized beyonds its merits. 
Easy-going Tom Lincoln never exercised his 
rather sluggish brain much with the abhorrence 
of slavery. Still we are to see that it had an in- 
fluence upon his movements, even if such influence 
was mainly unconscious. Kentucky had received 
that early stream of migration from Mrginia, and 
had become pretty well settled while the States 
across the Ohio River were as yet largely un- 
touched. But with the growth of population slav- 
ery had grown, having now become "the peculiar 
institution," and was producing its well-known 
effects in begetting Classism and in degrading 
free labor. The result was that the white working 
man began to flee the State and to cross the Ohio 
River to a non-slaveholding territory, decreed 
such by the famous ordinance of 1787. Thus we 
find the Lincolns and the Hankses, with many 
others, making a new turn in their long line of 
migration, and passing northward into the Free- 
States of Indiana and Illinois. For two genera- 
tions they had lived in Slave-States, and had been 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

largely transformed into the poor white Southerner, 
illiterate and shiftless. There can be no doubt that 
slavery produced an unhoping lethargy in the 
white laborer, who, if any ambition was left in him, 
would quit the State, or if he stayed, would drop 
into a lower and more hopeless condition of life. 
Thus Thomas Lincoln was carried by a great tide 
of migration more than by his conscious purpose, 
though he deserves credit that he did not stay 
where he and his family were liable to sink deeper 
down into the social slough. Slavery may be 
deemed chiefly the cause of his departure, even 
though he was not fully aware of the fact, since he 
moved with the stream. 

So it came about that Thomas Lincoln, m the 
fall of 1816, was making preparation to go to 
Indiana. His procedure was unique. On a small 
neighboring run he built a flat-boat, loading it 
with his tools and with a cargo of four hundred 
gallons of whiskey, in which he saw a speculation 
based on the thirst of the Hoosiers. He floated 
down the run into a larger creek which bore him 
into the Ohio River, in whose surly waters his 
rickety craft upset, his whole cargo plunging into 
the stream. He fished out his tools and a part o( 
the whiskey, fixed up his boat, and litarted again 
down the turbid current. At last he brought to, 
and }uished sixteen miles inland where he picked out 
a piece of primeval forest, and bought it from the 
Land Office at Vincenncs. Then he trudged back 



THE NEW MIGRATION. 39 

home to Kentucky and fetched his wife and 
children, with household effects. But he took this 
time a wagon, avoiding evidently the flat-boat. 
At last he reached his new home on Little Pidgeon 
Creek in Spencer County, Indiana. Thus the 
Lincoln-Hanks line of migration has come north- 
ward into a Free-State — a little event which is 
destined to ha"\'e a world-historical consequence. 
This line we have seen originally moving out of 
the North and making a long detour through 
Virginia and Kentucky, wherein, however, they 
were but drops in a great migratory current. It 
should be added, as a significant mark of the time 
and of the men, that both the brothers of Thomas 
Lincoln crossed the Ohio River out of the Slave- 
State into a Free-State — the one having gone 
before him into Indiana, and the other, the eldest 
and the heir of the house, having passed after him, 
into Illinois. 

Again let us ponder the epoch-making fact that 
Abraham Lincoln as a child was borne in that vast 
swirl of migration which once swept from the North 
into the more genial climate of the South, where 
it dashed upon an obstacle, slavery, which seemed 
at first weak, if not vanishing, but which gradually 
became stronger and firmer till it at last deflected 
that migratory current, or a large part of it, around 
towards the North again, into the new States of 
the West. Slavery in the Revolutionary Period 
was regarded as moribund, but it took a new lease 



40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

of life, being galvanized chiefly by the invention of 
Whitney's cotton-gin (1793). Slavery and its 
profits increased enormously, but immigration de- 
creased; indeed, the ever-renewing human current 
turned away, quitting the South, to which it once 
mainly flowed, and bearing in its bosom North- 
ward young Abraham Lincoln, destined to be its 
greatest product and supreme representative. 

The spirit in this migratory separation from the 
South indicates at least dissatisfaction with the 
new trend there towards slavery. The Folk-Soul 
shows itself to be seeking the Free-State, and to be 
productive of the Free-State as its political institu- 
tion. This instinct, quite unconscious, lay in the 
movement to which Abraham Lincoln belonged, 
and in which he participated. Here we may 
catch an early glimpse of the Folk-Soul which he 
is finally to voice and to organize into a party 
whose conscious and expressed aim is to make the 
Union productive of Free States only. So we see 
that Lincoln simply uttered what had long been 
engendering and throbbing in the Folk-Soul of the 
West. 

We may well empahsize again that these immi- 
grants, having taken the Virginia dip, bore with 
them through all their wanderings her strong sense 
of institutions, as well as her deepest political 
prineii)le, which may be designated as the State- 
producing State. Of this i^-inciple they were to 
become the propagators in peace as well as the 



THE INDIANA HOME. 41 

vindicators in war. But on the other hand we 
must also take note that they turned away from 
Virginia as productive of Slave-States, notably in 
case of Kentucky, often called the child of Virginia. 
Hence we see them wheeling out of Kentucky 
into the North-west, in which Virginia had shown 
her other side, namely as productive of Free-States, 
and which accordingly corresponded with their 
own institutional character, fostered if not de- 
rived from the great creative period of Virginia and 
her statesmen. This was indeed the very soul 
of the North-west, being that which created it and 
remained its innermost nature. The Folk-Soul 
we call it, of which Lincoln became first the in- 
stinctive bearer, then the voice, and finally the 
instrument of its realization. 

IV. 

The Indiana Home. 

In the midst of the primeval forest Thomas Lin- 
coln began to build a shelter for his family during 
the inclement season which was at hand. This 
shelter was a cabin of unhewn logs, fourteen feet 
square, enclosed on three sides, the fourth side be- 
ing left open and serving for door and windows. 
It had no floor, and very little rude furniture; it 
was not called a house but a camp, "a half-face 
camp" in the dialect the backwoods. It resembled 
a built cave rather, and the family had a taste of 



42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST 

the primoruial cave-life of their remote ancestors. 
Thus Thomas Lincoln is getting back to his origin, 
and with his family is living over again an early 
chapter in the life of his race, strangely carrying 
out some modern ideas of education. 

We must keep our eye upon young Abraham 
who, now in his eighth year, entered upon this 
new phase of his discipline. The physical environ- 
ment was here quite different from that which he 
had experienced in Kentucky. Around him on all 
sides stood the dense forest which had its own in- 
habitants^ — bear, deer, turkey, and smaller animals. 
Nature revealed herself to him in her wild, exuber- 
ant mood, being far more productive here than in 
the poorer soil of the Kentucky farm. The boy 
became a pioneer, an axe was put into his hands 
and he began with his parents the struggle for ex- 
istence on the border of civilization. Since its first 
settlement for two hundred years, America had 
reared a hardy and unique race of pioneers ; Abra- 
ham Lincoln is also to pass through this stage of 
his country's development, repeating the luck and 
lot of his own ancestors, and the experience will 
leave its mark upon him to the last. 

During a whole year the Lincoln family held 
their fortress, "the half-face camp", against the 
assaults of wind and rain, of snow and ice, thus 
maintaining its own amid all the weather caprices 
of winter and summer. Then a new cabin was 
ready, enclosed now on its fourth side, fully eigh- 



THE INDIANA HOME. 43 

teen feet square, and built of hewn logs, think of 
it! Surely, careless Tom Lincoln is getting stylish 
if not extravagant. The old building, ''the half- 
face camp ", is handed over to a new batch of emi- 
grants, relatives leaving Kentucky, atoms swim- 
ming in that migratory stream over the Ohio and 
dropping down in the Free-States of the North- 
West. Ycry striking is the fact that Kentucky at 
this time seems quite fully settled and overflowing, 
while just across the river in Indiana are the back- 
woods. 

It was indeed a straitened existence. Not much 
money was in circulation, trade fell back largely 
upon primitive barter. We hear that coon-skins 
passed for money, and that hams of the hog and 
deer were a legal tender. To get food was not so 
difficult, the neighboring woods furnished free meat 
for the human animal now growing more and more 
carnivorous. Abraham Lincoln reports that he shot 
a wild turkey through the chink of the cabin. The 
ground was cleared of its trees, and some grain was 
sown — enough for corn-dodgers and pone and hom- 
iny all the week, and for wheat cakes once a week, of 
Sunday mornings. As to clothing, the household 
could and often did furnish it from the fleece of 
wool, especially the linsey-wolsey shirt; deer skins 
were cut and sewed into a kind of rude shoe or moc- 
casin, as well as pantaloons; the winter overcoat 
of fur was robbed from the bear, and the coon fur- 
nished the head-gear for nothing. 



44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

Behold then that life of the young pioneer truly 
self-sufficing, independent. The three great op- 
pressors of man, food, raiment and shelter, are 
met by the man himself single-handed, and van- 
quished without calling to his aid the Social Sys- 
tem, the Economic Order. He builds his own 
house without the architect, makes his own cloth- 
ing without the tailor, gets his own food directly 
from Nature— surely an individual sufficient unto 
himself. The whole social process, now become so 
vast and intricate, is performed in that little cabin 
of the frontiersman, by himself and his family. 
No doubt it is the germinal process of civilization, 
which here the youthful Abraham has practically 
to appropriate in its primal simplicity and com- 
pleteness. 

And now let us picture our boy seizing hold of a 
peg fastened in the logs of the cabin wall; there is 
a row of these pegs running up to a kind of loft 
where is a pile of corn-shucks and leaves. This is 
the boy's bed, quite like that of the animals out- 
side in the woods. Covered with skins if it be cold 
weather, he takes his rest. When the time comes 
he skips down the pegs out of his nest and starts 
the morning blaze in the fire-place, by whose light 
he can often be seen taking furtive glances into 
a book which he cautiously draws from its hiding 
place in a chink, encouraged by his mother and 
perchance screened by her lest the irate father 
might interfere with the boy's studies. 



THE INDIANA HOME. 45 

Such was the natural primitive life of the Lin- 
coln family when a new enemy appeared. The 
demon of disease swooped dowTi upon the little 
settlement and carried off many victims, not spar- 
ing the cattle. It was called the milk-sickness, 
and soon had in its clutches the mother of the 
household, Nancy Lincoln. There was no physician 
within thirty-five miles. The poor woman died 
and was buried in the most humble fashion by 
her husband, who made a rude coffin out of green 
timber. The report runs that the son, still a boy, 
obtained a minister to perform the burial ceremo- 
nies over the grave of his mother some months 
afterward. 

This occurred in 1818. A year of motherlessness 
for the two children followed in that log cabin, 
during which the sister, then eleven years old, 
must have in part filled the missing place of the 
mother. 

So vanishes from the stage of life Nancy Hanks 
Lincoln, mother of Abraham Lincoln, deathless 
through the fame of her son, who seems hardly to 
have recognized her. As he was in his tenth year 
when she passed away, she must have nursed his 
earliest aspiration, and have directed his primal 
bent toward the acquisition of knowledge. Even 
her own husband, quite indifferent to learning, she 
taught to write his name, as tradition says; how 
much more effort would she naturally lavish upon 
her boy who certainly responded to her eagerness. 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

She imparted to him his first acquaintance with 
the Bible, instilHng into him its precepts ; also the 
tales of the Western People she told him with bits 
of family history during its great migration, of 
which record the woman is usually the depository 
and propagator. Lincoln was first spiritually 
shaped by his own mother during his childhood of 
nine years and more; yet he seemingly never ap- 
preciated fully the fact when he spoke of his early 
life. Time, however, has been doing justice to 
her part in the formation of her son, and even to 
her name, which has been clouded. Sympathetic 
hearts have found her lonely grave and fittingly 
marked its site, rescuing it from oblivion. Open- 
ing her weary eyes in that rude cabin for a final 
look at her husband and children; especially, one 
thinks, resting her last glance upon her boy, the 
mother of Lincoln turns her face to the wall and 
passes beyond. 

Like many a man born outside the common run 
of mortality, Lincoln brooded over his origin, and 
sometimes threw out wondering doubts as to 
whence he came. He differed much from all the 
Hankses whom he had ever known, and even more 
from his father Lincoln, shiftless, ignorant, unas- 
piring, with no limit-transcending impulse or 
capacity. That was and still is the mystery of his 
genius, for it is genius which breaks down the law 
of inheritance. Genius refuses to be derived from 
parents, or to be transmitted to children ; it seems 



THE INDIANA HOME. 47 

to drop down from supernal sources upon this one 
individual and then to take its flight beyond with 
the cessation of life. In the line of descent Genius 
has no father and leaves no son : a fact which seems 
to have worried Lincoln and to have called up 
many a dubious speculation in regard to himself, 
conscious as he was of the divine gift. Now what- 
ever may be the case in Heaven, on earth the son 
of the divine father is not usually divine, but 
drops back into the terrestrial line of his grand- 
father. Property, disease, the Particular can be 
inherited, but not the Universal, which somehow 
insists upon selecting its own heir, quite apart from 
the ancestral strain, which may at most color 
in spots the God's presence. So we behold the 
epiphany of Genius on our planet, wondering 
whence it comes and whither it goes ; hardly more 
do we know than this, that the Great Man does get 
incarnated about the right moment, and if he be 
of a reflective bent, he will have many musings 
over his own incarnation. 

Biographer Herndon has repeatedly touched 
upon this tendency of Lincoln to peer into the 
abysses of his own being, which involved him in 
questionings and speculations, and even doubts 
about his parentage. To our mind it was liis 
genius seeking to fathom the mystery of its own 
origin, which is quite unfathomable as to its finite 
appearance in Time. Ground, cause, even evolu- 
tion seem to break down in trying to catch and 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

circumscribe Genius in its descent into this indi- 
vidual just here and now. Lincoln, therefore, 
found it hard to account for himself on the spot, 
but the Future will unfold him and his work 
more and more, and that will be his true explana- 
tion. 

V. 

The Step-Mother. 

About a year after his wife's death, widower 
Thomas Lincoln seems to be brushing up a little, 
he is getting to pay some attention to his personal 
appearance. There is no perceptible cause for this 
change in the neighborhood of Little Pidgeon 
Creek. Having saved some money, one day he 
put on his best, and set out for Elizabethtown, 
Kentucky, the place where he spent some time as 
a young man learning his carpenter's trade. There 
is little doubt, though the record has not been 
handed down, that on arriving he took the shortest 
road to the house of Mrs. Sallie Bush Johnston, 
now a widow, but whom as a young lady he had 
never forgotten. For, according to a tradition of 
the gossips of the town, he had been rejected by 
her in the days of their freedom. Set it down to 
the credit of Thomas Lincoln (for he needs it) that 
the spark of true love never di(xl out in his bosom, 
but began to flicker and sputter, and finally to 
blaze uj) in the solitary life of his cabin. At last it 
impels him to take the aforesaid journey. 



THE STEP-MOTHER. . 49 

It is declared that Miss Sallie Bush and her 
family belonged to the better class of people, to 
the "quality" of that Kentucky town. Our worthy 
reporter Herndon cites the statement of one of her 
neighbors evidently at first hand : " Life among 
the Hankses and Lincolns was a long ways below 
life among the Bushes." These words have a 
smack of that class-pride which, proper enough in 
its limits, in its excess became the bane of Ken- 
tucky and of the whole South, and is usually re- 
garded as one of the effects of 'Hhe peculiar insti- 
tution." The hardy pioneers of the Common- 
wealth had little of it, but already it was at work 
in Kentucky during the second decade of the nine- 
teenth century, and in Virginia long before. The 
white non-slaveholding laborer felt and heard the 
contempt (perceptible slightly in the foregoing 
citation), picked up his belongings and quit the 
State for the north side of the Ohio river, where 
population, wealth and general development 
rapidly outstripped the new, though older slave 
States to the South. 

After a brief wooing Mrs. Johnston yielded. At 
first she is said to have hesitated, having three 
children on her hands from her first marriage and 
owing some debts which she wished to pay off 
first. Sly Thomas, getting a list of these debts, 
slips away and pays them the same evening. They 
could not have been large, seemingly not much 
more than an excuse to stave off the importunate 



50 ABRAHAM IINCOLN—PART FIRST. 

suitor. But the transaction showed Lincohi's love, 
and when he shook the receipts in her face, she 
gave her hand in return, and the hcense was issued 
next morning. The marriage took place, whereat 
all the tongues of the town were set to wagging in 
a common refrain: Widow Johnston has married 
beneath her station. But she soon packed her 
household articles in a wagon and was speeding up 
the road for Indiana. 

What was it won the woman's heart? She loves 
his love rather than the man himself. She had a 
touch of aristocratic pride, and yet she descended 
to poor, unthrifty Tom Lincoln whom she knew 
well. Some have supposed that he deceived her 
by painting his Indiana prospects in too glowing 
colors. But she is not known to have manifested 
any great disappointment in that respect. It is 
the old story: the woman is taken by the man 
whose devotion conquers her, though she knows 
him to be of small account. So we may for a 
moment look at Thomas Lincoln as the hero of a 
sunny little idyl. And there is no doubt that :n 
this woman he won the greatest prize of his life. 
The moment she stepped into that cheerless cabin 
of his, it began to be transfigured. She required 
the husband to show his devotion in a new way. 
Under her command he changes the tlirt floor of 
his abode into one made of wood, and then he 
adds the hitherto missing doors and windows. She 
brought a quantity of good furniture and bedding; 



THE STEP-MOTHER. 51 

notably "a walnut bureau valued at fifty dol- 
lars," probably an heirloom. She washed and 
dressed up her two step-children, and their nest of 
leaves and corn husks was changed for a comfort- 
able feather bed. Even the husband seemed to 
modify his character for the better under that 
fresh inspiration of the renovated household. So a 
woman, in her way heroic, comes into the life of 
young Abraham Lincoln, now in his eleventh year. 
Her difficulties were not small: among others two 
sets of children, boys and girls on each side, were 
gi'owing up in that one-roomed cabin. There was 
a good opportunity for quarreling, also for mixing 
too freely. The evidence shows that the. mother 
was aware of both dangers and guarded against 
them with success. 

The great fact now before us is that such a 
woman takes charge of the boy Abraham Lincoln, 
and becomes his second mother at a time when he 
needed a strong will to protect him in his striving. 
And the story must not be left untold that Sallie 
Bush after her first marriage remained on friendly 
terms with the Lincolns, and that she took a 
special liking to little Abe, bringing him to the 
store of Mr. Helm (who tells the tale) in Elizabeth- 
town for tidbits, and showing her fondness in vari- 
ous ways. All this must have occurred before 
the boy was past seven years old, and before the 
Lincolns had moved to Indiana. Already she may 
have divined his genius, and felt her deep relation 



52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. - 

to that boy, deeper than any relation she had or 
could have to her own children. And that may 
have been the stronger though hidden motive to 
her surprising marriage. For time will prove that 
Abraham Lincoln was her soul's child by a tie 
more profound and coercive than consanguinity. 
She herself late in life thought so and said so amid 
tears for her martyred son, who, she foreboded, 
would never return alive from the Presidency. She 
was accustomed to declare that '' my mind and 
Abe's ran together." Let Thomas Lincoln have 
the credit that he chose such a woman, who could 
love his love in spite of the man. But the interest 
of all time to come centers uj^on the part she had 
in the training of his boy, as she furnished the 
very sunlight in which his youth flowered. 

It is evident that the step-mother was far more 
active, aggressive, ambitious for appearance, 
through her higher standard of living, than the 
real mother, who comes before us as a patient, 
passive, much-enduring soul. She seems to take 
what comes, to accept her husband as he is with- 
out trying to transform him except in the one 
early instance of teaching him to write his name. 
Resignation was apparently her character and her 
religion. Emotion seems to have been her salient 
trait, which also went over into her boy. But now 
a very different sort of woman enters the too easy- 
going household, a woman of will, not however 
without kindness or sympathy. Under her train- 



i 



THE STEP-MOTHER. 53 

ing the youthful Abraham henceforth comeS; seem- 
ingly at the right moment. She will impart to 
him purpose, strength, a new ideal of living. 

So we conceive the shares of the two mothers in 
the boy's development. They were not only dif- 
ferent but antipathetic ; the step-mother showed 
not only her diverse nature, but her class prejudice 
against the mother. This is the one doubt which 
we have to record against the second Mrs. Thomas 
Lincoln. We have to think that she influenced 
her step-son in his strange attitude toward his 
own mother, really a disregard for her memory. 

Without expanding further this dark but 
delicate point, let us pass to the bright side of the 
present relation," which reveals Mrs. Thomas 
Lincoln as the paragon of her kind. She belies 
all the proverbs, fairy-tales, and folk-lore of the 
ages which take delight in besmirching the step- 
mother. Difficult, indeed, is her task, and every 
neighbor seems bent on making it more difficult. 
With such an accumulated burden on her hands 
she often fails, probably in the majority of cases. 
But the step-mother of Abraham Lincoln must be 
pronounced the great exception, under the most 
trying circumstances. She it was who nursed his 
genius when it most needed such care. Will she 
had, and a very strong one; this is what chiefly 
looks out in that face of hers which we see pictured 
in the books on Lincoln. Yet hers was a will 
tempered with duty, especially to that one member 



54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

of ner household, whose greatness she certainly 
forefelt. And his gratitude and recognition were 
unstinted. But that tender heart of his with its 
boundless sympathy, which lay even deeper than 
will, was the priceless gift of his mother, Nancy 
Hanks Lincoln. 

VI. 

Lincoln's Schooling. 

What inference shall we draw from Lincoln's 
slender means for getting even an elementary 
education? Have opportunities really become 
too great, so that they are undermining the self- 
reliance of our youth? Such statements we hear 
now and then. But we have to think that Lincoln 
was Lincoln in spite of the defects of his scholar- 
ship. He would have been the same and have 
done his work if he had possessed more or even less 
learning. His Apprenticeship would have con- 
tinued, till it had completed itself, if not this year 
then the next, or the next after that. The cjuantity 
of erudition is important, but not all-important. 
Genius can make a little do, even if it has not much 
besides itself. Still it has to be unfolded, and has 
to have its favorable environment, which was not 
wanting in the case of Lincoln. 

He has handed down the names of his early 
teachers in the two brief skel('li(\s of liis life writt(Mi 
by himself. Already we have mcntioncvl liis fii'st 
schooling in Kentucky. What he ac(iuired there 



LINCOLN'S SCHOOLING. 55 

is unknown; but it is likely that he, a bright boy 
in his seventh and eighth year, learned to read, 
and obtained a little start in figures and in writing, 
being assisted by his mother, who was likely to 
keep his lessons alive after arriving in the woods 
on Little Pidgeon Creek, Indiana. 

Not till he was ten years old did he go to his next 
school, the first one for him in his new home, 
kept by a teacher of the name of Dorsey. Four 
years more passed before he could get to another 
itinerant master, Andrew Crawford, who in addi- 
tion to the customary branches, gave to those 
backwoods children lessons in good manners, not 
without insight into their needs. Lincoln was now 
fourteen years old, and made the most of his oppor- 
tunities, getting probably the longest and best 
spell of his schooling. Three years later he started 
to go to Master Swaney's, but he had to walk over 
four miles, and he soon stopped or was stopped by 
his father, who wanted him for work, and who 
thought that so much learning was unnecessary, 
as he had gotten along without it. Or it might 
positively ruin the boy, for young Abraham had 
had already gained the double reputation of being 
both lazy and a student. 

In fact, to obtain what education he had, a con- 
tinual struggle had hvim going on in the household, 
the step-mother always protecting and encouraging 
her step-son, whom she soon regarded as her 
Heaven-sent ward. Since she lived till 1869, and 



56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

was visited and questionea oy investigators, she 
has left on record some suggestive glimpses into 
the early life of the Lincolns in Indiana, particu- 
larly as regards the schooling of young Abraham. 

Says she: "I induced my husband to permit 
Abe to study at home as well as at school. At 
first he was not easily reconciled to it, but finally 
he too seemed willing to encourage him to a 
certain extent." That is, the wife in that noisy 
unstudious household is gently but firmly asserting 
herself in favor of the studious child, though but 
her step-son, in whom she saw such talent and 
aspiration. Then she continues: "Abe was a 
dutiful son to me always, and we took particular 
pains not to disturb him — would let him read on 
and on till he quit of his own accord." She com- 
manded quiet to "the domestic uproar made by 
four other children and several grown people 
usually, so that the only person of hope among 
them might get his lesson and prepare himself for 
his work. 

Another precious bit from the same source has 
been preserved, expressing the deep sympathy, the 
concordance of soul between the two: "Abe was 
a good boy and I can say what scarcely one woman 
— a mother — -.can say in a thousand: Abe never 
gave me a cross word or look, and never refused in 
fact or appearance, to do anything I requested 
him. I never gave him a cross word in my life." 
She felt him to be her son, her spiritual child: 



LINCOLN'S SCHOOLING. 57 

"His mind and mine — what little I had — seemed 
to run together." There is no doubt that she 
regarded it her chief vocation to be mother to that 
boy, who was hers by a deeper tie than blood. 
Far more than her own son and her other children 
was this step-son hers, though she touches the fact 
tenderly: ''I had a son John who was raised with 
Abe. Both were good boys; but I must say, both 
being dead now, that Abe was the best boy I ever 
saw, or expect to see." So the mother looks back 
at her two boys living still in the Little Pidgeon 
Creek home; she judges both in the most affec- 
tionate way, but decides absolutely in favor of 
her step-son. The truth is, John Johnston, her 
son, was a good-natured, good-for-nothing ne'er- 
do-weel, who, during his life gave trouble enough 
to his mother and to Lincoln through his ineradi- 
cable vagrancy. "You are not lazy and still you 
are an idler," says Lincoln in a keen and kind 
letter to him, proposing an excellent recipe for the 
trouble (Works, I., p. 164). 

In this connection may be cited those deep- 
toned utterances gushing spotaneously from the 
mother's heart, whose preservation we owe to 
Herndon. "I did not want Abe to run for Presi- 
dent, and did not want to see him elected. I was 
afraid that something would happen to him. 
And when he came down to see me after he was 
elected President, I still felt, and my heart told me, 
that something would befall him, and that I should 



58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

never see him again." Not many passages in 
literature well up from sources so deep and pure 
as that. And it may be added that Lincoln him- 
self had the s^me ever-lurking premonition of his 
fate. 

Clear it is without the strong will of that sym- 
pathetic step-mother standing guard for him, 
Lincoln would never have had the chance to go to 
school on Little Pidgeon Creek, and no opportunity 
for study at home. He was now a robust youth 
and could do a good deal of heavy work, from 
which his father could draw some profit. But 
the step-mother, clearly the will-power of the 
family, interfered in behalf of his education. We 
have to think that the real mother, with her 
passive emotional character, could have hardly 
shielded him against the opposition. She was 
given him when he was a little child, before his 
labor counted for anything. But it was the step- 
mother who bestowed upon him his teens for 
study, reaUy the most fruitful time for acquisition. 

Lincoln deeply recognized the sterling character 
of his step-mother, and knew her place in the evolu- 
tion of his career. Of his father he did not and 
could not have a high opinion. Nor could any 
great affection spring from paternal treatment 
which rose to the point of giving a knock-down to 
the boy, if report can bo credited. So uncongenial 
a diversity in temporanient, in talent, in aspiration, 
seems to have excited at times in Lincoln those 



LIXCOLN'S SCHOOLING. 59 

vague questionings in regard to his origin, with 
which he often played as a mental toy. But the 
stranger fact is that Abraham Lincoln was the 
spiritual son of his step-mother, whose school was 
far better for him, and more deeply influential 
than all his other schooling. 

We must also observe the fact that his step- 
mother was not only his protectress in the home, 
and exemplar in character, but directly his teacher, 
his critic, his first sympathetic audience. Herein 
again she has left a naive but very touching record : 
"Frequently," says she, "he had no paper to write 
his pieces down on. Then he would put them 
with chalk on a board or plank, sometimes only 
making a few signs of what he intended to write. 
When he got paper, he would copy them, always 
bringing them to me and reading them. He would 
ask my opinion of what he had read," which was 
his own composition, and for which he desired 
some appreciative listener and judge. Thus she 
encouraged him to train himself in the written 
word, nursing his genius in that lowly cabin with 
love and recognition. This was altogether his 
best school, opening in his home when he was 
eleven years old and closing at twenty-one. Thus 
the supreme fact of Abraham Lincoln's youth was 
his apprenticeship to his step-mother, lasting a 
good ten years, during the forihative and mentally 
acquisitive time of life. Here he began to win 
thi'ough practice that literary sense which speaks 



60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. ' 

directly to the hearts of the people, and in which 
he stands without a rival. For we can now see 
that the words of Abraham Lincoln are destined 
to be read and pored over far more than those of 
any other American writer by the people, not 
merely of his own land, but of all lands. He has 
voiced the Folk-Soul at the most critical turn of 
its evolution hitherto recorded in History. Ad- 
dressing his early words to that responsive step- 
mother in that otherwise unappreciative environ- 
ment, and winning her applause, he is getting ready 
to speak to his vaster audience, that of his Nation, 
and finally that of the Ages. 

VII. 

The Printed Page. 

Lincoln is credited with saying that "he had 
read through every book he had ever heard of in 
that country for a circuit of fifty miles." This 
innocent boast, even if exaggerated, expresses a 
fact which the biographic interpreter of Lincoln's 
career must throw into a strong and steady light. 
It illustrates strikingly his eagerness to get hold 
of the wisdom of the past stored in and handed 
down to him by the Printed Page. Many other 
anecdotes corroborative of the same over-mastering 
impulse are recorded concerning him, and sot forth 
his omnivorous appetite for reading books. 

Few youths have ever shown so strong an innate 



THE PRINTED PAGE. 61 

delight in devouring print, especially under such 
adverse circumstances, as did Lincoln. Books 
were his University in which he took a unique 
course, truly universal. A^ery different is the 
satiety which at present is apt to come upon the 
boy struggling distractedly through the deluge of 
typography, which pours upon him from every 
direction. But Lincoln had^to hunt for the book 
he read, and often he made considerable journeys 
to borrow it for a brief time. It was a real treasure 
when he obtained it, and a privilege to peruse its 
contents. He came to have a love for the Printed 
Page, and was drawn to it irresistibly as the source 
of light to his career, as the very beacon of the 
past illuminating his way to the future. 

He pursued his bent obstinately in spite of a good 
deal of jealousy and disparagement manifested in 
his own household. Said a relative, Dennis Hanks, 
to an interviewer: "Lincoln was lazy, a very lazy 
man. He was always reading, scribbling, cipher- 
ing, writing poetry and the like," which Dennis 
deemed rank idleness. Always intellectually active 
the youth was, in spite of sneers at his laziness 
from everybody except his step-mother. Quite a 
little course of study he was taking, all to himself, 
blazing his way as he went along. Bodily activity 
alone was appreciated in that commuility of 
farmers, who knew muscular work, but not mental. 

Not much oral instruction did he ever receive, 
his knowledge came not through the ear but 



62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

through the sight absorbing the Printed Page. 
Thus he would become his own teacher and drill 
himself in what was for him the best. Here 
again we may listen to the report of the observant 
step-mother: ''When he came across a passage 
that struck him, he would write it down on boards 
if he had no paper, and keep^it there till he did get 
paper. Then he would re-write it, look at it, 
repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap- 
book, in which he put down all things and thus 
preserved them " for review, comparison, repeti- 
tion. Thus the Printed Page is appointed Abra- 
ham Lincoln's Professor, very capable indeed, 
being able to impart to him the best thoughts of 
the best men of all ages. Let us also note the 
educative value involved in this process. Not 
simply ear-minded, but also eye-minded he be- 
comes, and from the immediate transitory voice 
of an instructor he rises to the lasting word of the 
Printed Page, which act is both a great training 
in itself and gives the chief means for all other 
training. Plainly Lincoln is making his own 
University and is Head Tutor to himself. It is 
well known that many persons who can read print, 
find difficulty in getting its meaning till this be 
voiced to them. They are not truly masters of 
the Printed Page, and cannot use it fully. In 
contrast with such {)orsons stands Lincoln who 
seemed to have a native; lordship over the Printed 
Page, and an inborn love of it, easily making 



THE PRINTED PAGE. 63 

it unlock its treasures to him already in the back- 
woods. 

This matter once understood, it can be no sur- 
prise to learn that his appetite for reading books 
was insatiable. Only thus could he break out of 
his narrow life at Little Pidgeon Creek, and com- 
mune with the great world everywhere and at all 
times. Unanimous is the recorded opinion of all 
who knew him that he was a genius limit-trans- 
cending, and only through the Printed Page could 
he reach beyond his cooped~up environment. Let 
us copy a homely but very striking picture of him 
while engaged in this phase of his career, originally 
drawn by a fellow-laborer: "When Abe and I 
returned to the house from work, he would go to 
the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn bread, sit 
down, take a book, cock up his legs as high as his 
head and read. We grubbed, plowed, mowed and 
worked together bare-footed in the field." This 
■ attitude of repose somewhat modified remained 
his favorite one for reading and meditation during 
life. It was the image of concentration, his long 
limbs were compelled to send their blood brain- 
ward, and his body made no demands, being fully 
relaxed into a total lack of all dignity. 

Unceasing was his effort to win the treasures of 
the Printed Page: "Whenever Abe had a chance 
in the field while at work or at the house, he would 
stop and read". So says one witness of these early 
days; another declares: "He lost no time at home, 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

and when he was not at work he was at his books", 
of which he seems to have always commanded a 
small supply. The boy could not stop : "He kept 
up his studies on Sunday and carried his books 
with him to work so that he might read when he 
rested from labor". Going home from his task in 
the field, he would sit on the rail fence, draw out 
his book and begin to read, not being able to wait 
till he reached the house, or thinking, if he did, 
that old Tom would have a scene with him about 
book-learning. In that position he was once ob- 
served by two men p^issing, when one of them ut- 
tered the prophecy of his future greatness, which 
has been more than verified, as he sat "on the top 
of an old-fashioned stake and rider worm fence" 
utterly oblivious of their approach through absorp- 
tion in a book. 

Old-time country people, however, deemed this 
mental industry of Lincoln to be a makeshift for 
getting rid of work. That was the theory of the 
father who, however, was strongly counteracted by 
the opposite view of the step-mother. Young Lin- 
coln was unfavorably contrasted with his sister 
Sally: "She was more industrious than Abe", re- 
ports one of their common acquaintances. But 
the richest statement comes from a neighboring 
farmer: "He worked for me but was always read- 
ing and thinking. / used to get mad at him for it. 
I say he was awfully lazy. He would laugh and 
talk, crack jokes and tell stories all the time; didn't 



THE PRINTED PAGE. 65 

love work half as much as his pay". So speaks 
through the reporter old John Romine, the surly 
agriculturist, in whose words we still feel the heat 
of many a scolding and squabble through the long 
intervening years. But he probably never tackled 
physically young Abraham, an athlete whose 
strength was bruited about the neighborhood as 
equal to that of three ordinary men. There is no 
doubt, too, that Lincoln did a fair day's task, 
being able to strike a heavier blow with a maul, 
and make an axe bite deeper into a tree than any 
known man of that region. But the surly agricul- 
turist, with an eye to tlirift, wanted him to do 
more, and to stop his "reading and thinking" — and 
so sends this amusing growl down time. 

This intense longing to probe the secrets of the 
Printed Page as the very talisman of his destiny 
may well have begun decidedly in his tenth year 
when he received his- second great lift in educa- 
tion at the school of Master Dorsey. All this was 
confirmed and intensified with Master Crawford, 
when he was fourteen years old and more ready to 
receive everything that his teacher had to give. 
He was the best speller in that country, and at the 
spelling matches, whichever side chose him, was 
deemed to have won already without any further 
contest. He also learned to write a good hand, 
characteristically clear and definite. Both his 
spelling and his chirography, acciuired at this time, 



66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART FIRST 

he retained to the last, familiar now to millions 
and destined to be so to milliards. 

The pedagogue will not fail to be interested in 
the training which comes from spelling as the 
analysis of the word into its sounds, each of which 
has its visible sign. The teacher with spelling- 
book in hand voices the seen word which the 
speller transmutes into its elements, letter by let- 
ter, and syllable by syllable. Lincoln is said to 
have had the habit of reading aloud to himself. 
He wished to hear the thought voiced as well as 
to see it printed — to hear it as well as to eye it. 
Primordially man is a listener rather than a reader. 
Lincoln, like many people, was both. Spelling is 
the connective between the spoken word and the 
printed word, and trains the mind to pass easily 
from one to the other. Lincoln's mastery of the 
Printed Page was furthered by his early excellence 
in spelling. 

Another tendency in Lincoln, and one very im- 
portant for his education, was that of reproducing 
in writing whatever took hold of him strongly. 
He made copious extracts in his copy-book and 
repeated the passages. He carried with him a 
piece of chalk for writing and ciphering on any flat 
surface he might come upon, such as boards and 
hewn logs. The cabin home was covered with his 
scribblings. Nor did he stop with the departure of 
sunlight. A favorite position in the evening was 
to lie on his stomach before the fireplace and with 



THE PRINTED PAGE. 67 

a piece of charcoal to cipher upon a broad wooden 
shovel. When dawn would begin to peep through 
a chink in his loft, he would get up and start to 
reading, copying, or perchance composing. These 
attempts at composition should be noted, espe- 
cially as they were voluntary, and indicated his 
spontaneous bent toward a literary utterance. He 
wrote little essays, made chronicles upon local 
events in scriptural style and scribbled doggrels., 
He imitated all forms of expression within his 
reach: he would thump the table and preach a 
sermon from a text in the Bible after the manner 
of the preacher; he would make a political speech, 
and actually wrote an article on temperance which 
was published in a newspaper. Notable is it that 
as a boy he composed an essay on his life-long 
theme, the Union and Constitution, of which a 
local lawyer, not otherwise famous, declared: 
"The world can't beat it", and procured its pub- 
lication. 

Thus our young Abraham has beheld himself 
reproducing the marvelous Printed Page — not only 
reading it when made by others but actually 
making it himself. So far did his mastery of it 
proceed there in the backwoods, that he began to 
be creative of it by his own native power, and 
doubtless to glimpse its place in his training. 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

VIII. 

Folk-Books. 

Having made real to ourselves the youthful Lin- 
coln's wonderful mastery of the Printed Page, we 
next inquire about what he read. What were the 
books and their general character which exerted a 
formative power upon him at this period? The 
answer may be given: chiefly the Folk-Books of the 
race. These nourished his growing spirit, and also 
gave him a form of expression for reaching the 
Folk-Soul, wherein lay his supreme vocation as 
well as his unique power. 

Lincoln's library was largely borrowed. It 
would seem that he never owned such a common 
text-book as an arithmetic; at least his step- 
mother declared in response to an inquirer that 
she could not recollect that he ever possessed one 
in his own right. But every man, woman and 
child in the neighborhood would loan a book to 
the kind-hearted, aspiring boy whom all loved 
and admired. Still Lincoln must at last have 
gotten together a few books of his own. There is 
a story about his becoming the owner of Weems' 
Life of Washington. He had borrowed it from a 
churlish old neighbor, afterward satirized as Blue 
Nose Crawford, and was reading it when one night 
a storm came up and the rain beat in through a 
chink of the Lincoln cabin, damaging the covers of 
the book. The owner put his loss at seventy-five 



FOLK-BOOKS. 69 

cents, which Lincoln, having no money, had to 
pay him in work, being required to pull fodder 
three days for the costs. We may suppose that 
he then owned the book (though our record does 
not expressly say so) , and perused it many times 
with boyish delight in its hero. Those three fod- 
der-pulling days turned out the most profitable of 
Lincoln's youth, giving him the printed portraiture 
which shaped for him his American ideal. This 
book had been adopted by the People of that time 
as their Life of Washington, veritably a Folk- 
Book, with its commingling of fact, fable, anec- 
dote, overcanopied with providential guidance and 
preservation of the Hero. Already we have alluded 
to it as an influence in Lincoln's career (see Intro- 
duction), who noticed it upon a public occasion. 
Also we may say that this book helped to make 
him acquainted with the American Folk-Soul, of 
which he was then an unconscious atom, but of 
which he was to become the guide and the utter- 
ance in the sorest trial it ever yet has undergone. 
As all Peoples have regarded their heroes as semi- 
divine, so Lincoln took the popular view of Wash- 
ington, looking back to him as a kind of demi-god. 
And when his own great world-historical task 
dawned upon him, he could not help coupling it 
with that of Washington, which had been so im- 
pressively set forth to his youthful imagination in 
the Folk-Book of Pastor Weems. ^^'e observe that 
most of our biographers of Lincoln speak very 



70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

apologetically of this Folk-Book and of Lincoln's 
devotion to it; but we cannot help saying to them 
and to ourself: Make, scribbler, your life of 
Lincoln equal in influence to the work of Weems, 
and, having the Hero, write a new American Folk- 
Book, if you can. 

Another text-book in this School of the People, 
which he read often and committed to memory, 
apparently owning a copy, was J^sop's Fables. The 
animal world in the midst of which the youth was 
placed, both tame and wild products of farm and 
forest, was made to convey lessons of homely wis- 
dom and morality to the popular mind. The old 
Greek fabulist had the power of making the beasts 
of the field and the birds of the air talk to one an- 
other and to man, with whom they were so closely 
associated. ^Esop also spoke to the Folk-Soul of 
his own time and of all time, and we can see Lincoln 
listening to him and catching his trick, his manner, 
and appropriating it for coming use in addressing 
that same Folk-Soul. 

Here we cite a striking instance of Lincoln play- 
ing iEsop to Grant, who has just been appointed 
Lieutenant-General, and is not to repeat M'Clellan 
in command of the army of the Potomac. The 
President began fabling: ''At one time there was 
a great war among the animals, and one side had 
great difficulty in getting a commander who had 
sufficient confidence in himself. Finally they found 
a monkey by the name of Jocko, who said that he 



FOLK-BOOKS. 71 

thought he could command their army if his tail 
could be made a little longer. So they got more 
tail and spliced it on to his caudal appendage. He 
looked at it admiringly and then thought he ought 
to have a httle more still. This was added, and 
again he called for more. The splicing process was 
repeated many times, until they had coiled Jocko's 
tail all around the room, filling all the space. Still 
he called for more tail, and, there being no other 
place to coil it, they began wrapping it around his 
shoulders. He continued calling for more, and they 
kept on winding the additional tail about him until 
its weight broke him down." 

Grant saw the point, so he declares, and left the 
president with the determination not to play the 
part of tail-encumbered Jocko. (The foregoing 
fable has been declared to be an adaptation from 
Orpheus C. Kerr.) 

Another of Lincoln's Folk-Books was Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress, which opened to him a new 
literary form highly popular and cognate with the 
fable, that of the allegory. There is no doubt that 
its content also appealed to him powerfully, since it 
reflects the conflicts of the inner life which was so 
much cultivated by Lincoln's early Quaker ances- 
try. He showed through his whole career a per- 
vasive moral consciousness, which, even if native to 
the man, was nourished by reading this old Puritan 
Folk-Book, truly a teachcn* of the people. Lincoln 
was by nature a symbolist in tlic wide sense of the 



72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

term, uttering himself in a variety of symbols — 
metaphor, anecdote, story, fable, allegory — all of 
which he used more or less dexterously, with an in- 
ner purpose or meaning in the outer form. This 
is what he meant by requiring a nub (as he called it) 
to a story, which was not to be merely a running 
narrative, idealess, pointless, nubless. Bunyan's 
allegory is very transparent, and its charm is that 
it runs double so easily that the humblest mind 
gets the 7i^ib to it from the start. 

Another Anglo-Saxon Folk-Book of a very dif- 
ferent strain from that of Bunyan, fell into 3'oung 
Lincoln's hands, the well-known Robinson Crusoe. 
Here is the story of the adventurous pioneer, who 
is cast on a solitary island, and has to draw out of 
himself and re-make his whole social and institu- 
tional world. To be sure the hero brings it along 
within himself, but he has to get it outside. In the 
very process of such a life Lincoln was placed on 
the frontier of Indiana, to be sure not wholly alone. 
Still he could not help seeing Robinson Crusoe en- 
acted before him, while he was himself a partici- 
pant. The book made him conscious of an import- 
ant phase of his existence there in the woods, and 
thus educated him to know his environment and 
himself in it. Crusoe is a glorification of the self- 
reliant, self-sufficing individual, and hence ap- 
peals mightily to the American backwoodsman as 
self-helper and institution-maker. Interesting is 
the fact that some educators have introduced it 



FOLK-BOOKS. 73 

into the schools of the people, making it a center or 
core of correlation for other branches. Well, 
Lincoln had it -first in his school, in which he was 
both the teacher and the taught. 

In this list of Folk-Books accessible to young 
Lincoln we should by no means omit the Bible 
which is in itself a whole literature endowed with 
a unique powTr over the people. We know — for 
it still exists — that in Thomas Lincoln's cabin was 
a copy of this greatest of Folk-Books performing 
its peculiar function to the English race, especially 
to the hardy pioneers of this race in America, who 
were through it baptized and re-baptized in i\\v 
God-consciousness of that old Semitic stock. 
Abraham Lincoln's own given-name was taken 
from one of its chief worthies, also a pioneer, and 
had descended through a line of ancestral Lincolns. 
His grandfather Abraham had two brothers called 
Isaac and Jacob, which hints the strong Hebraiz- 
ing spirit started by the Reformation and continued 
by the Puritans in Old and New England whence it 
migrated with the emigrants to the backwoods. 

There has been no little controversy over the re- 
ligious views of Lincoln. It can not be gainsaid 
that scriptural allusions and citations run through 
his entire works. The Christian dogmas seem not 
to have taken hold of him so strongly, but the God- 
consciousness as set forth in the Old Testament was 
never wanting to l^iim, and its power over him in- 
creased to the end of his life. It reaches its cul- 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

mination in his last Inaugural spoken a few weeks 
before his death. The strong Hebrew tinge in this 
document, and the citations from scripture con- 
tained in it, carry us back to his youth when that 
Folk-Book must have been the chief element of his 
culture, — lisped first at his mother's knee and then 
rehearsed in his Indiana home. The main theme 
of his last Inaugural is God and God's justice 
uttered with the rapture and rhythm of the old 
Hebrew prophet: "Yet if God wills that it (the 
war) continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondman's two hundred and fifty years of un- 
requited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 
blood drawn with lash shall be paid by another 
drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said: ' The judgments 
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " 

Thus Lincoln's youthful reading lay in the line 
of the great Folk-Books which have been hallowed 
by the people for ages. This was the early litera- 
ture which trained his way of thinking and expres- 
sion, and also stored his mind with no small amount 
of popular lore. We may call it the literature of 
the Folk-Soul in which Lincoln so deeply partici- 
pated, and through which he reached far back into 
the spiritual unfolding of the race. For we see on 
this list a Semitic, a Greek, an Anglo-Saxon, and 
specially a Puritan Folk-Book — a kind of summa- 
tion of the popular culture of the Occidental world. 

It would seem that Lincoln had his living ex- 



FOLK-BOOKS 75 

emplar and instructor in the art of story-telling. 
Tradition has handed down the name of John 
Baldwin, the Village Blacksmith of Gentryville, 
as the champion story-teller of the settlement. 
Little Abe would "slip off to his shop and sit and 
listen to him by the hour," with a childish delight 
in the art which touched his deepest chord, and 
which he would then practice on others, till finally 
he began to enter the lists with the blacksmith 
himself. From the stock then laid up he is said to 
have drawn in the Presidential Mansion, so that 
"statesmen, plenipotentiaries, and famous com- 
manders have many times made the White House 
ring with their laughter over the quaint tales of 
John Baldwin, the blacksmith." (Lamon.) 

But it was not Lincoln's ambition nor his des- 
tiny to make a Folk-Book. Anecdote, story, joke- 
cracking and yarn-spinning were but a means of 
bringing a great principle and a great duty home 
to the people, that they fulfil their world-historical 
purpose. Of course the youth Lincoln was uncon- 
scious of any such motive, as were also the people 
of that time. Still it lay implicitly in the Folk- 
Soul of the West already, as we have seen in tracing 
the secret impelling cause of their migration from 
South to North, from the Slave-State to the Free- 
State, in which our Abraham Lincoln profoundly 
participated. 

What, then, has Lincoln to say ultimately to 
his people? He must speak what lies deepest in 



76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

him, and that is institutional. The American 
State or the Federal Union is getting ready for a 
great change in its polity; it is under training to 
pass from its dualism of being and producing two 
antagonistic kinds of States, slave and free, to the 
unity of being and producing one kind only, and 
that the Free State. In this mighty institutional 
transition lurks the very soul of Lincoln, who is 
destined to be its supreme representative and 
protagonist. For such a task he is also to be trained 
even in these youthful days on Little Pidgeon 
Creek, and the strange fact comes to light that a 
book drops down upon him, as it were, just about 
when he is mature enough to begin to understand 
its theme. This book we may call a Book of 
Institutions, by way of contrast with the before- 
mentioned Folk-Books, these being after all but 
an instrument of utterance for Lincoln's institu- 
tional spirit, which is the deepest fact of him, of his 
people, and of his age. This fact with its cor- 
responding Printed Page, is what must next be 
considered. 

IX. 

The Book of Institutions. 

So now, in the course of Lincoln's youthful 
apprenticeship, another book falls into his hands, 
very difTerent from the Folk-Books just set forth. 
He is to learn the political institutions of his coun- 
try and to master their expression, which is not 



THE BOOK OF INSTITUTIONS, 77 

symbolic but legal. The people of the United States 
have to understand the law, and in a degree tc talk 
its speech, for they are the lawmakers who are to 
govern themselves through their institutions. 
This is one of the most unique things of the coun- 
try. The American Folk-Soul is and has to be 
legal-minded, for it must vote on legislation and 
even may have to remake its Constitution, which 
it once made. This legal-mindedness Lincoln 
must also begin to acquire in his early years, if he 
is going to participate fully in the popular conscious- 
ness. In order to bring this new strain of the 
American Folk-Soul home to himself through the 
Printed Page, he borrowed from friendly Mr. 
David Turn^iam of Gentryville, a book which prob- 
ably gave him his bent in life, and started him 
toward his true vocation. So important is this 
book for marking an epochal turn in Lincoln, that 
we shall transcribe its title-page entire, which is 
also a kind of table of contents. 

"The Revised Laws of Indiana, adopted and en- 
acted by the General Assembly at their eighth 
session. To which are prefixed the Declaration 
of Independence, the Constitution of the United 
States, the Constitution of the State of Indiana, 
and sundry other documents connected with the 
Political History of the Territory and State of In- 
diana. Arranged and published by authority of 
the General Assembly, Cory don, 1824." Besides 
the documents mentioned the book contained the 



78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

Act of Virginia in 1783 conveying the North- West- 
ern Territory to the United States^ and the Ordi- 
nance of 1787 prohibiting slavery in the same Ter- 
ritory. 

Rightly this may be called an Institutional Folk- 
Book of the North-West, which every State might 
make and print, but which no people ever before 
had or could have, in the World's History. Lincoln 
in his eighteenth year gets it, starts to studying it 
and discussing it with intelligent friends. He 
learns the distinctive character of his Nation from 
this peculiar Folk-Book, very different from those 
European Folk-Books which have been already 
considered, and which have certainly trained him 
to popular utterance and have given Jiim many a 
heljj for attaining his supreme end. Still they are 
not that end nor do they have it as their content. 

We have thus seen Lincoln's ]:)reparation for 
getting acquainted with the Folk-Soul and for 
talking its language. Already he has tested him- 
self by little addresses to crowds with story, anec- 
dote, humor; he has likewise made some brief 
stump-speeches, in those days. A newspaper 
from Louisville was furnished to him by a friend, 
and he devoured that, which brought him into di- 
rect connection with the political questions of the 
day. In 1828 he was an ardent ]3olitician at an 
election of Antlrew Jackson. A history of the 
United States is also set down as one of the books 
of his little library. 



THE BOOK OF INSTITUTIONS. 79 

In 1820 occurred the great struggle on the ques- 
tion of slavery going into the territories. The 
whole country was in commotion, the Union was 
threatened. The agitation was specially strong in 
the West, which was most deeply concerned. Lin- 
coln, though a boy of only eleven, must have heard 
a good deal of it, and in his young brooding soul 
have pondered the two sides. Certainly he then 
became fully aware of the great issue between slav- 
ery and anti-slavery, which was likewise to be the 
great issue of his life. The Missouri Compromise 
settled the excitement for many years, but it broke 
out again furiously during Lincoln's mature age, 
and gave him the key-note of his career. But the 
conflict between the expansion and the restriction 
of slavery he must have heard already in 1820, 
and have obtained some dim premonition of what 
it all meant. In Lincoln's part of Indiana, the 
South-Western, near Kentucky, there were some 
slaves at this time, (the census of 1820 gives 192 
slaves for the whole State). Thus the question 
was a practical one which everybody discussed and 
took sides upon. The Indiana Supreme Court in 
1821 decided against slavery and ended the ques- 
tion. We can see that Lincoln's boyhood was 
passed in the presence of much disputation about 
the legal and moral aspects of slavery. Especially 
was the spread of it to new territory a much-mooted 
problem. 

When some eight years later Lincoln got hold 



80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

of the before-mentioned Revised Laws of Indiana 
with the precious collection of national documents 
therein contained, he was able to take a new and 
deeper grasp of the great coming task of his people 
and of himself. He was drinking at the sources. 
Let us briefly summarize these documents, and 
their main contents. (1) The Declaration of 
Independence — the first gi'eat assertion of national- 
ity on the part of the American People together 
with the grounds of separation from the mother 
country; (2) The Constitution of the United 
States — the organization of the Union, the greatest 
political document the world has yet seen; (3) The 
Constitution of the State of Indiana — the organ- 
ization of the single State of the Union, as de- 
rived, wherein the Federal Constitution is seen to 
be State-producing; (4) The Ordinance of 1787, con- 
taining the clause prohibiting slavery in the North- 
Western Territory, ever memorable for its conse- 
quences, as well as for the use that Lincoln made of 
it in his speeches. The same clause has in it the 
first Fugitive Slave law, which grants the right of 
reclaiming fugitives "from whom labor or service 
is lawfully claimed in any one cf the original 
States" — which has also a great history before it, 
as well as much to do w^ith Lincoln's* future-; (5) 
The statutes of Indiana or the laws made by the 
Legislature under the Constitution of the State — 
in studying which he will begin to grow into his 
vocation of lawyer and its peculiar terminology. 



THE BOOK OF INSTITUTIONS. 81 

In that Book of Institutions was also con- 
tained Virginia's cession in 1783 of the North- 
Westem territories, which were to be formed into 
new States, one being Indiana. In this act of 
cession lay much — nothing less than that the 
Union is to be State-producing. The Constitution 
was not yet in existence, and the Federal Union 
was not yet formed; still this deepest spirit of it 
was at work, being chiefly derived from Mrginia, 
who, however, transfers her State-producing power 
to the General Government, then the Confedera- 
tion. Lincoln had personally the same derivation, 
and had also its political instinct which made him 
completely one and harmonious with the derived 
Free-States of the North-West. 

It has been transmitted by the testimony of 
several people that Lincoln read this new Institu- 
tional Folk-Book with great zest and industry, 
and was in the habit of repeating and explaining its 
contents. It must have taken him a good while to 
master it, for it was clothed in wholly different 
speech from the other Folk-Books which he knew. 
He had to master its legal nomenclature, and 
doubtless put many a question about it to its 
owner, Mr. David Turnham of Gentiyville. The 
hardest book he had ever read, but he persists, for 
that is one of his earliest and strongest traits. 
"When a mere child, I used to get irritated," says 
he, "when anybody talked to me in a way I could 
not understand. I do not think I ever got angry 



82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

at anything else in my life." He would chafe in 
wrath at the limit of ignorance, and proceed to 
surmount it like the stormer of a fortress. We may 
well suppose that this new book called forth many 
a fit of noble indignation. Mighty was the provo- 
cation of what he did not know, and the seemingly 
impossible charmed and enraged him, the limit- 
transcending youth. 

It is manifest that Lincoln was led by this law- 
book into a new world. He passed from the fable, 
parable, allegory, the realm of poetry and the sym- 
bol, into the dry abstractions of the law; he was 
appropriating the garment of Justice whose lan- 
guage his task was to learn. Doubtless he felt or 
soon began to feel the life beneath all these colorless 
forms — a training in pure intelligence— though 
plumped clown into it seemingly by chance, all of 
a sudden. It gave direction to his life, to his career, 
not immediately but after some years. Already 
at that time he expressed to a lawyer from whom 
he borrowed legal works to read at home, a desire 
to study law, but said that his parents were so 
poor that they must have the fruits of his labor. 
This early aspiration will be fulfilled when liis dis- 
cipline for such a task Is completed. 

There is little doubt that Lincoln during this 
period begins to get a glimpse of what he is to be at 
some time in the future. Already he makes 
political speeches to tlie bo3's. He wrote a compo- 
sition on the American Government, "calling at- 



THE BOOK OF INSTITUTIONS. 83 

tention to the necessity of preserving the Union and 
perpetuating the Constitution," a strange early 
prehide of his latest deed. He attended lawsuits 
before the local justice-of-the-peace, and often 
walked to the county-seat to see the larger trials 
in the court-room, and to hear the lawyer ad- 
dress with eloquence the gentlemen of the jury. 
So he beholds what he is to be hereafter, and pre- 
enacts his own vocation in a small way. 

Out of the Institutional Folk-Book he could and 
probably did acquire a complete view of the system 
of the American government, which is there given 
in original documents. How the Union works, 
how the Single-State works, its relation to and 
origin from the Union, as well as its own sphere of 
government; may be drawn from the compilation. 
The youth gets acquainted with the political insti- 
tutions of his country in the original forms which 
create them and keep them going, of course through 
the people. Already he has had some experience 
of them, he knows of elections, stump-speaking and 
of laws. In 1828 when he was nineteen years old, 
there was a Presidential campaign and much dis- 
cussion, in which constitutional questions were 
handled. Thus Lincoln could see those bare ideal 
forms of law take on life and action, exempHfying 
what he had learned. 

Moreover he sees by the campaign and its 
speeches that it is just these abstract principles 
which must be explained to the People, who cannot 



84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST, 

SO readily grasp such intricate legal formulas. 
Here comes-in the use of what he has elsewhere 
learned — anecdote, fable, parable, humorous illus- 
tration. The institutional world must be brought 
home to the Folk-Soul that the latter perpetually 
recreate and keep alive and active the former, and 
thus preserve freedom. The People must indeed be 
governed, but that government must be its own 
through Law and Constitution, both of which it 
ultimately makes. Now Lincoln was in every 
fibre of his being an institutional man, which trait 
may well have started to grow into his character 
consciously with the study of the foregoing Book 
of Listitutions. 

The early germinal Lincoln has been well out- 
Uned by one of his boyish comrades: "When he 
(Lincoln) appeared in company, the boys would 
cluster around him to hear him talk. Lincoln was 
figurative in his speech, talks and conversation. 
He argued much from analogy and explained 
things hard for us to understand by stories, tales, 
figures. He would almost always point his lesson 
or idea by some story that was plain and near 
us, that we might instantly see the force and 
bearing of what he said." Thus we behold Lincoln 
as a boy explaining the difficult idea which he had 
gained, to his little group of people, truly the 
embryo of the great and greatest Lincoln when he 
reached the height of interpreting and thereby 
mediating the World-Spirit with the Folk-Soul. 



THE BOOK OF INSTITUTIONS. 85 

Of this supreme function of his we shall have much 
to say hereafter; at present we are to watch his 
preparation. In explaining dry points of law to 
his comrades, he was on the way to address the 
gentlemen of the jury, over whom his power in a 
good cause became irresistible. Still further, he 
had to make clear to the greatest of all juries, the 
people, the nature of the Drcd Scott decision, and 
to win a favorable judgment — wherein he had a 
unique success. 

Lincoln has corroborated this character of him- 
self in a reminiscence of his boyhood. The mighty 
impulse we see driving him ; he must know and then 
be able to tell what he knows — two very different 
things by the way, and often wholly disjoined. 
He declares that "I could not sleep, when I got 
on hunt for an idea, until I had caught it," that is, 
until he had made it his own in knowledge. 
But that is not all: "When I thought I had got it 
I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and 
over," — this repetition is noteworthy, being pro- 
foundly educational. And still further, his dis- 
satisfaction continued "until I had put it in lan- 
guage plain enough for any boy I knew to compre- 
hend." He must impart what he has won by 
thought, bringing it down to the level of his audi- 
ence. Moreover "this was a kind of passion with 
me," as a boy "and it has stuck by me" as a 
man, "for I am never easy now when I am hand- 
ling a thought till I have bounded it" on a!! si Ics, 



86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

thus making it definite and clear not only to my- 
self, but also to my audience. 

Ardently, passionately, Lincoln we behold in his 
youth educating himself for his supreme future 
vocation. In this self-education we should note 
the three things upon which he puts stress: Ac- 
quisition of the idea, its expression, and then its 
impartation. He is not simply to get and form- 
ulate it for himself, but he is specially to study 
how he can convey it to others, in general to the 
people. 

Thus young Lincoln already at Gentryville 
begins to be dipped into the deepest spiritual cur- 
rent of his coming life through this Book .of Insti- 
tutions. He starts to learn ''the What" of his 
message, and even of his destiny ; we may conceive 
that "the How" he is hkewise appropriating 
through the popular Folk-Books. But, as before 
stated, it is not his call to produce a new Folk- 
Book, but to employ the old ones for his and their 
supreme institutional purpose, which is really 
what created them far back in the ages ever toil- 
ing to realize and to express some idea. So Lincoln 
uses them or their literary art to express his idea 
and that of his age to the people in their own native 
soul-form and dialect. 

It is clear, then, that Lincoln is taking an exten- 
sive and profound course of instruction in that best 
of all American schools — the Higli School of the 
People. What he is learning there, we have sought 



ANOTHER MIGRATION. 87 

to bring to the surface, till we see the general sweep 
of the curriculum, even if many details lie buried 
in oblivion. A unique character he has already 
shown under his circumstances. All the boys of 
Gentryville, of Indiana, and of the entire West 
had the same opportunity to go to school to the 
Folk-Soul, and to receive her deepest lessons. But 
Lincoln was the single youth who saw and seized 
fully the chance — that is just his mystery, his 
genius. Born of the humblest parentage, reared in 
obscurity and poverty, why just he? The same 
question comes up concerning eveiy Great Man 
who stands at the turning-point of an epoch, and 
changes, or seems to change, the course of History. 
Having thus noticed Lincoln's High School and 
the main text-books used by him in its training, we 
are brought to a fresh transition in his Hfe; we may 
deem it a change of schools from Indiana to 
Illinois — he having still to serve his Apprenticeship 
to the Folk-Soul, though in a wholly new way and 
with new results. 

X. 

Another Migration. 

"Up and be off, farther westward!" So we may 
conceive the old Aryan ancestor to have said count- 
less generations agone somewhere in the Asiatic 
Highland ere he started on his long Occidental 
journey round the globe, not yet accomplished by 
liis descendants who have been repeating his act 



88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

ever since. One of these descendants, Thomas 
Lincoln, feels this primeval migratory instinct of 
his race and one day resolves to quit Indiana 
and move toward the Mississippi. Various grounds 
of dissatisfaction have been given for this change 
of abode, which grounds are to be allowed their due 
weight; but the deepest ground was that roving 
Tom Lincoln felt that he had already been too long 
confined to one spot and must move on again, tliis 
time to another Free-State, Illinois. 

It is to be noted that this removal was North- 
westward, passing still further from a Slave-State, 
and apparently following the instinct of the main 
American migration of the time. The center of 
population was moving Northward from its former 
Southern sweep, and also Westward from the 
Old Thirteen of the Atlantic coast. Our Abraham 
Lincoln, having just attained his majorit)^ is to go 
through the ancestral experience of his family, 
which has been on the wing across the continent, 
though with numerous deflections, ever since fore- 
father Samuel Lincoln set out from Norwich, 
England, quite two centuries before this last de- 
parture. And it may be added that this migra- 
tory line of the Lincolns is but a single strand of a 
vast human flight in the same general direction, 
whereof something has been already said. Young 
Lincoln, therefore, becomes an unconscious par- 
ticipant in a far-reaching racial movement through 
his present experience. 



ANOTHER MIGRATION. 89 

Fourteen years the family of Thomas Lincoln 
had resided in Indiana under pinched conditions. 
The children had grown up, there seemed small 
prospect for them in that part of the country, whose 
soil turned out scanty and infertile, and whose 
climate was unhealthy. The conclusion was reached 
that there must be a going forth to a richer land, 
of which they had heard in Illinois through a rela- 
tive who lived in the valley of the Sangamon. A 
cedar which is said to be still standing on the site 
of Lincoln's home, was planted at his departure in 
his honor by his old friends. Once afterward, in 
the campaign of 1844, he revisited it, hunted up aU 
the old spots of sacred memory, and even broke out 
into verse — wliich was a habit of his in his early 
days. 

So it befalls that in March, 1830, the Lincoln 
family starts through the spring mud for its new 
destination, in big movers' wagons with ox teams. 
Thirteen persons compose the company. It is 
said that Lincoln invested his cash — thirty dol- 
lars — in small merchandise which he peddled along 
the road, doubling his investment. So not (juite 
penniless could he have been when he .reached 
the Sangamon, having some sixty dollars. Let 
the fact be duly recorded, since Lincoln in after 
life had the name of being unthrifty and careless 
as regards money. It seems that the movers passed 
through old \'incennes, where the young inquisitive 
feUow for the first time saw a printing-press. Ten 



90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

miles west of the town of Decatur the company 
halted and prepared the new home, a log cabin, 
and put in their first crop. To fence the ground 
Lincoln assisted in making some rails, which after- 
ward became famous and gave him the title of Rail- 
Splitter. 

And now let us call up the central figure of this 
migrating group. A tall raw-boned youth is driv- 
ing a yoke of oxen which toils laboriously through 
the muddy roads of the Illinois prairie and traverses 
the high waters of swollen streams, to the tune of 
gee-haw. And when he reaches the cabin of a 
frontiersman, he stops and displays his articles for 
sale, saying: You ought to have a button for 
your pantaloons instead of that thorn stuck through 
your suspenders; aye, you have no needle and 
thread to sew the button on, here they are; upon 
this table spread out for us so hospitably, I observe 
a lack of knives and forks — I have some good ones, 
cheap. So he must have chaffered along the way 
in order to gain his hundred per cent out of his 
money. But when night comes on, and the com- 
pany is gathered round the blazing hearth of some 
farm-house together with its inmates, then the 
Artesian well of stories, jokes, humor would begin 
to bubble, spout and play out of the mouth of the 
long-legged ox-driver, and last till bed-time, to the 
unforgettable delight of that household, some of 
whom thirty years later might remember their 



ANOTHER MIGRATION. 91 

visitor when he was chosen President of the United 
States, toward which goal he is now marching. 

After a journey of a fortnight, the Lincolns 
reach safely their destination, where soon our 
Abraham, being of age and having done his duty to 
his parents separates from the family, and starts 
upon a new stage of his career which is to be set 
forth in a new chapter. 



CHAPTER SECOND. 

Drifting. 

We now come to a period in Lincoln's life, which 
shows him cutting loose from the anchor of his 
parental home and grappling in multitudinous 
ways with his new environing world. To him 
may be applied his own picturesque metaphor 
drawn from his river experience: "I am a piece 
of floating driftwood." This period embraces six 
or seven years, the better part of his twenties, say 
from 1830 to 1836-7. He was dissatisfied with his 
former life and with the outlook which his father's 
family gave him. From that he must separate at 
all hazards, if he intends to be anything. The 
parting, especially from his step-mother, was pain- 
ful; in fact he hung around her neighborhood for 
nearly a year after he had declared his indepen- 
dence. His material outfit seems to have been 
the rude suit of clothes on his body and this was in 
such a condition that it had to be renewed at once. 
Accordingly we hear that one of the first labors 
of the free man was to earn a pair of pantaloons 
to be made of butternut jeans, for every yard of 
which he had to split four hundred rails. So we 
can imagine herculean Abraham Lincoln with 
axe biting deeper into the trees of the forest and 
with maul coming down upon the wedge in 
(92) 



CHAPTER SECOND — DRIFTING. 93 

huger whirls and heavier thuds than ever be- 
fore, being propelled by the new necessity as well 
as by the new consciousness of freedom which tells 
him that henceforth he is his own man. 

Such is the record, which tloubtless gives us a 
glimpse of the rail-splitter Lincoln at this time. 
Still we cannot well conceive of him as utterly 
moneyless, for what has become of those sixty 
dollars, half of which he made by peddling small 
merchandise on the way from Indiana? Hardly 
has he let it all slip through his fingers, even if he 
has been generous to his parents, helping them to 
make a fresh start in their Illinois home. 

Here then begins a new (the second) stage of 
what we have called Lincoln's Apprenticeship, in 
which he is indentured to the world, or more par- 
ticularly to the Folk-Soul as it manifested itself 
among the pioneers of Illinois. Already he had 
thought of breaking loose from the narrowness of 
his father's cabin and life in Indiana, when he was 
nineteen years old. But a friend whom he con- 
sulted advised the contrary, and exhorted him to 
stay with his parents, as duty demanded, till he had 
attained his majority. Now, however, he is twenty- 
one, his service is finished and he feels not only the 
right but the necessity of setting forth upon a new 
career, which is his own, and which brings him out 
as a distinct, separate, self-sufficing individual. 

Separation, then, he is making from the first 
anchorage of life, the Family, in which he has been 



94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

reared. This act determines the character of the 
whole present period : hence we may call it separa- 
tive. Having quit the stability of one kind of 
life, he cannot acquire at once the stability of an- 
other kind. He tries his hand at many sorts of 
occupations, he becomes a Jack-at-all-trades, 
seeking to find his center, and groping after his 
true vocation. He drifts down the little stream 
of life to which he has come with many a struggle 
and gyration, truly a "piece of floating driftwood" 
in the turbid waters of his own Sangamon at high 
flood, as they whirl him on to the Illinois, to the 
Mississippi, to the Ocean, which he is destined to 
reach through a tortuous channel full of picturesque 
surprises. 

And yet with this outer fluctuation and ever- 
renewed unsettling, Lincoln clings with dogged 
pertinacity to the inner thread of his destiny, 
which we have already seen spinning. He still 
continued to read with a world-consuming thirst 
all the books he could borrow as well as those which 
he had brought along. He practiced public speak- 
ing with the trees of the forest as his auditors, 
among whom also stood his fellow rail-splitter, 
John Hanks. The latter tells how a candidate 
came into their locality and made a speech. "It 
was a bad one," declares our voucher, having 
become a critic of speech-making as well as of rail- 
splitting, "and I said Abe could beat it. I turned 
down a box and Abe made his speech, his subject 



CHAPTER SECOND — DRIFTING. 95 

being the Navigation of the Sangamon River." 
The result was "Abe beat him to death" on that 
burning topic, "The Navigation of the Sangamon 
River," the most imjDortant pohtical question of 
the age to the settlers living along its shores. Nor 
must we forget to note that the same John Hanks, 
some thirty years later, brought two of these rails 
into the Convention at Decatur which put Abraham 
Lincoln directly into the Presidential race. Of 
all the rails ever split, they are most worthy of 
being named world-historical. 

Amid the many goings and comings of Lincoln 
during this period, there is one spot about which 
he hovers : the village of New Salem wooing if not 
wedding the Sangamon. This village had its own 
peculiar life, which was very brief, but typical 
of much in the West. It lasted only about a decade 
of years, but Lincoln has given it a fadeless, rosy- 
cheeked immortality. The Sangamon river also 
flows incessantly through this period of Lincoln's 
life; the stream seems to have wrought a charm 
upon him, he gets to believing in its great destiny as 
if coupled with his own. If we could transport our- 
selves back into the Greek mythical world, we might 
conceive the youth Abraham Lincoln in love with 
the fair river-nymph, Sangamona, yellow-tressed 
like the Greek goddess, whom he pursued for years 
with her flowing locks. Rut she always ran through 
his grasp, till at last she fleeted out of his view 
forever. At present a navigable Sangamon seems 



96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

some far-off fabulous creature, interesting chiefly 
because she had the power of throwing a spell of 
blinding fascination for years over Lincoln, and 
of being the chief instrument of sending him to his 
first Legislature and thus starting him on his 
political career. But he saw his river-nymph 
dwindle away to a ghost, and with her evanishment 
went hand in hand her own village. New Salem. 
Thereupon Lincoln has to quit his shadowy quest 
and give up both— wherewith this period of his 
biography comes to an end. 

Lincoln is, then, serving a part of his Ap- 
prenticeship at New Salem, an important, even if 
a wayward and scattered part in appearance. 
A new phase of the American Folk-Soul he gets 
acquainted with here, and takes many a lesson of 
it needful for his future task. He passes from the 
isolated farm house to the community, which 
gives him a higher degree of human association. 
On the one hand he, having separated from the 
united or more concentrated life of the Family, 
is thrown back upon his individuality pure and 
simple, which finds its unity within, and thence 
combines anew with his fellow-man. It is thus a 
kind of fresh birth into that Folk-Soul which it is 
his first function to know through and through, 
in all its moods and depths, in its strong as well as in 
its weak traits, what it can be brought to do and 
what it refuses to do. For Lincoln has first to 
fathom it, and to sound its deepest aspiration and 



CHAPTER SECOND — DRIFTING. 97 

power, then he is to instil into it its great world- 
historical duty which also he has to start to learn 
in this Apprenticeship of his. 

New Salem recalls the Homeric village located 
on the frontier of European civilization in time 
and place, and pictured eternally in the Odyssey, 
with its singing story-teller, with its kingly man 
and chieftain in war and in games, with its public 
speakers and its fair women, above all, with its 
supereminent hero. So New Salem is a village 
on the frontier of American civilization, having a 
kind of epical idyllic hero, our Lincoln, who repre- 
sents quite all its lordlier phases as athlete, myth- 
maker, captain in war against the barbarians, and 
law-maker for the people. A. little idyllic epos, 
therefore, spins itself out along this entire New 
Salem period of Lincoln, interwoven with a deeply 
colored love-tale, whose tragic outcome seems to 
forebode that of the town, if not that of the hero 
himself. 

It is curious how completely this unfamed por- 
tion of Lincoln's life has come down to us. It 
impressed itself strongly upon the memories of the 
villagers, who have told it to numerous biographic 
explorers with many a little variation attuned to 
the one key-note of hcroizing their sole genius. In 
the small community, young Lincoln stands forth 
strongly individualized ; indeed we deem this to be 
just that time when he was winning his individual- 
ity. He is not here lost in the vast crowd of a 



98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

great city, but is a kind of dominant figure, known 
and recognized by every person in the place, which 
is the bridge for the transition from his rural and 
domestic to his communal and political life. 

Deep is the correspondence in character during 
this period between Lincoln and New Salem, be- 
tween the village and its hero. Both are waifs, 
riding buoyantly on the stream of Time for a few 
years, and linked together by a common sympathy 
and bent of nature. Both are "pieces of floating 
driftwood," on the devious Sangamon till the 
village begins to sink out of sight when Lincoln, 
having served his time, dexterously jumps off, 
and passes to the new and rising town of that region. 
He is compelled to give up New Salem and his 
water-nymph Sangamona, who has turned out a 
delusive, insubstantial shadow. With this trans- 
ition to Springfield the New Salem idyl and New 
Salem itself draw to a close. 

Lincoln when in the Presidential chair once said 
that he loved to think back upon his New Salem 
period. It was indeed his idyllic time of life, 
rainbowed with hope and poetry, yet shot through 
and through with dark clouds of failings and fail- 
ures ending in downright tragedy. For New Salem 
was blighted in the very hey-day of its youthful 
bloom, and Lincoln's first and strongest passion 
after a time of happy inflorescence, was smitten 
by fate like New Salem itself, and wound up in a 
crushing tragedy, a real tragedy of love, which 



DEXTOX OFFUT. 99 

deepened the melancholy lines already stamped 
upon his features and his soul. Still his limit- 
transcending genius whispered to liim its behest 
and he rose up transfigured from the tragic blow to 
a new career. 

I. 

Denton Offut. 

Lincoln is still hovering about the parental 
neighborhood, not exactly at home, nor quite 
away from home, being unable as yet to have the 
umbilical cord severed which ties him so strongly 
to his Family. But that is what must be done 
and done at once, say the Powers who preside over 
his destiny, dictating not only the one ph3^sical 
birth of the man but directing every new turn in 
his s})iritual genesis. 

Accordingly the person has appeared just at the 
appointed time who is to perform for Lincoln an 
act of liberation, giving him the opportunity to 
move forward a considerable curve in his orbit. 
The name of this person is Denton OfTut, the "West- 
ern adventurer taking the shape of a business man. 
He believed primarily in the Sangamon river and 
its future importance, extending his operations 
along it for many miles, as if he owned it. A jolly 
fellow with enormous quantities of brag at his dis- 
posal, particularly when the man became fluid by 
a sufficient admixture of strong drink; he would 
turn loose his tongue and his imagination at the 



100 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

world-embracing outlook of the Sangamon. This 
was the man who put his spell upon Lincoln for a 
couple of years. John Hanks, whom we have 
already seen as Lincoln's fellow rail-splitter, brought 
him one day to Offut and introduced him. Offut's 
scheme was to hire these men to go to New Orleans 
with a boat-load of stock and provisions, thus 
connecting the Sangamon with the rest of the globe. 
The bargain was struck, brief preparation was 
made by the twain, fare-well was said to all 
concerned, when they sprang into a canoe not far 
from their cabin doors, and floated down stream 
to Jamestown, seemingly the port of Springfield. 
To the latter they had to go by land in order to 
meet Offut. 

After some search they found him at the town 
tavern called the Buckhorn, where he had a good 
opportunity to loosen his tongue and to let it pour 
out its treasures before congenial listeners. This 
was in March 183 L Springfield was not yet the 
capital of the State, but hardly more than a fron- 
tier settlement, into which now steps, seemingly 
for the first time, the person who has caused it 
to be named in the remotest parts of the earth, 
and to be made a center of pilgrimage of the nuil- 
titude to the tomb of one who may be deemed 
more than any other man of the historic past the 
People's Hero. 

It turned out that Offut had been so occupied 
with his duties at the Buckhorn that he had pro- 



DENTON OF PUT. 101 

viclecl no boat for the trip. So the ardent naviga- 
tors had first to make their own craft, which was 
easily accompHshed by these deft backwoodsmen, 
handy with edged tools, particularly wuth the 
axe. Lincoln, it may be here interpolated, always 
showed a taste for mechanics and decided ingenuity 
in devising mechanical appliances. In a month 
the boat was ready and launched; laden with bar- 
rel-pork, corn, and live hogs, it was swung out 
into the roaring Sangamon, the classic stream, and 
started to keep company with those turbid waters 
sweeping Gulfward. But behold! a mill-dam 
interrupts the stream at Rutledge's mill. New 
Salem; the boat is stranded on it, and hangs over 
the edge of it for twenty-four hours, with bow 
high in air, and stern dipping water. What is to 
be done? Unload the hogs and corn into another 
boat borrowed for the occasion; then bore a hole 
through the bottom at the front, roll the barrels of 
pork forward, whereat the craft tilts, the water 
within it runs out of the auger-hole and over the 
dam she slides in safety. Stopping the hole in the 
bottom, and bailing out the water our heroic navi- 
gators start on their journey, if not round the 
whole globe, at least round quite a perceptible 
segment of it. 

It is agreed that the central figure of the incident 
at Rutledge's dam was Lincoln. His ingenuity 
took control in the ])inch of the crisis, even to the 
boring of the auger-hole, the culminating act. lie 



102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

shows himself the man for the emergency. Small 
indeed is the occurrence, yet typical; behold him 
some thirty years after this, on another far larger 
boat, nothing less than the Ship of State which is 
dashing about, with an utterly helpless helmsman, 
on the angry rapids toward the plunge of Niagara. 
Lincoln getting aboard seizes the helm, and directs 
the mighty hitherto drifting craft and shoots the 
cataract safely — the only man, seemingly among 
millions, who was able to do the job. Thus we 
may be permitted to link together the small and 
the great in the life of the Hero, the little incident 
in its little way pre-figuring the vast deed of the 
future. 

But dropping these far-off soul-stretching fore- 
casts and coming down to an immediate look be- 
fore us, we may see the whole village of New Salem 
gazing from the hill-side at the stranded boat, 
with many a vociferation from the men, who scream 
out from the point of safety what was to be done. 
But when the crisis is met successfully, Lincoln is 
a famous man in that community; indeed Offut 
is there on the bank singing his praises, and de- 
claring that now the problem of the navigation 
of the Sangamon is solved, the right man having 
appeared. Wc shall build a new kind of steam 
boat, says he, with rollers for shoals and dams, 
with runners for ice, and chiefly we shall make 
Lincoln captain, and then, "by thunder, she'd 
have to go." So that village choiring with 



DEXTON OF PUT. 103 

its hundred voices in unison, sings that day the 
lofty praises of Abraham Lincohi, and will not soon 
forget him. On his side let it be noted he will 
not forget New Salem. And let it be imagined 
that among the crowd looking at the sight from 
the hillside must have stood Ann Rutledge, the 
fair heroine of the New Salem idyl, who witnessed 
the first dramatic appearance of the village hero, 
doubtless with a heart beating admiration at his 
deed of skill and courage. 

The little craft soon passed into the Illinois out of 
the Sangamon and thence into the Mississippi, float- 
ing by many towns and cities, and meeting many 
sorts of boats. At last the boatmen reached New 
Orleans, sold their cargo, viewed the sights of the 
city. Here Lincoln saw the worst horrors of slav- 
ery, which was far milder in his native Kentucky. 
With his own eyes he beheld ''negroes in chains 
— whipped and scourged." In his wanderings he 
ran on a slave-auction; a comely mulatto girl was 
on the block, being pinched and felt and otherwise 
tested by the bidders. At the repulsive sight 
Lincoln is reported to have shown great indigna- 
tion, and to have dropped the projthetic words: "If 
I ever get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I'll 
hit it hard." So Lincoln ought to have said, even 
if he did not, for the striking incident has been 
shown to be uncertain, as if fabled after the great 
event to which it has a covert allusion. 

The navigator came back by steamboat and 



104 ABRAHAM LIXCOLX—PART FIRST. 

landed at St. Louis. They crossed to Edwards- 
ville, thence Lincoln with his step-brother who 
had been along, set out on foot for the new home 
of his father, who had moved again, cjuitting the 
valley of the Sangamon on account of another 
sickness, chills and fever. The son found the par- 
ents located on Goose Neck prairie. Coles County, 
a few miles from Charleston, the county seat. His 
stay was not long, not more than a month; he felt 
he must persist in his separation from the parental 
hearth already begun the year before. He struck 
out for the upper Sangamon again, and apparently 
in some kind of a boat once more drifted down 
stream into New Salem, where, as he puts it in 
his second autobiography, "Abraham stopped 
indefinitely, and for the first time, as it were, by 
himself," apart from all former relatives, friends, 
and associates. As individual he now asserts 
himself, quite alone and ready to work his owm pas- 
sage through the world. "This was in July 1831," 
as Lincoln dates it, and adds that "here he rapidly 
made acquaintances and friends," a wholly new 
set of them, and quite different from those whom 
he had previously known. So is marked a new 
step or stage in his Ai)prenticeship. 

We may conceive that Lincoln was drawn to 
New Salem by a curiosity to see again the scene 
of his famous exploit, and to get acquainted with 
the inhabitants, who had witnessed and applauded 
his triumph from the hill-side, and who, therefore, 



NEW SALEM. 105 

already recognized him as somewhat of a hero. 
Why should he not have the best start in life just 
at that point? But there was another ground 
which if not so ideal, was more practical: Offut, 
the persistent trumpeter of his glory, had offered 
him a good position. Let the autobiography 
again speak: ''He (Offut) conceived a liking for 
Abraham, and believing he could turn him to ac- 
count, contracted with him to act as clerk for him 
on his return from New Orleans in charge of a 
store and mill at New Salem." 

So Lincoln, having broken loose from home and 
described a considerable circle on land and water 
during the year, settles down in the river village 
which he is to make memorable by his stay. 

II. 

New Salem. 

Already we have made the name of New Salem 
familiar to our reader, to whom now must be given 
a somewhat more explicit account of it. A small 
place with never more than one hundred souls 
in it, yet with an earth-girdling ambition; it 
dreamed of a greatness never to be fulfilled, as it 
lay on its bluff in the sunshine, elevated about 
thirty yards above the general level of the land 
around. At its feet rolled the Sangamon, the 
(1( ceitful little stream upon which it built its vast 
hopes. It was founded not more than two years 



106 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST 

before Lincoln's arrival and its life lasts not long 
after his departure. Still it hatl at its best a 
thriving, throbbing existence. A brisk trade it 
drove with the surrounding country, having four 
stores, two mills and a tavern. Two spiritual 
guides are set down among its people, a preacher 
of whom we do not hear much, and a school- 
master, famous through Lincoln. A small quota 
of artisans had their shops about the village, which 
had something original in its simple communal 
life on the border of civilization. This communal 
life is what Lincoln is to experience, being the new 
fact upon which he comes in his career. More- 
over he is to take his part in the rise and the fall 
of the jjlace and to turn out in his way its leading 
man. New Salem we may regard as Lincoln's 
symbol for this period of his life, reflecting the trend 
of his spirit in its character. Lincoln's designation 
of himself as "a piece of floating drift-wood" 
could also be applied to New^ Salem, his com- 
munal environment. 

Offut's goods were slow in arriving, and Lincoln 
spent his time chiefly in lounging about town, 
making himself known and getting to know the 
people. Also he turned his hand to odd jobs that 
came along. His first was that of clerk at an 
election. Here he hatl an opportunity to try his 
story-telling gift on the small knots of voters who 
loitered round the polhng place. Tradition has 
handed down his success as well as some of his 



XEW SALEM. 107 

stories. The result of the election for him was 
that he won the position of chief fabulist and yarn- 
spinner of the place, the public poet we may deem 
him, like the bard of the old Homeric village. Such 
was his chief office in New Salem, and nobody ever 
supplanted him. 

But at last Offut opens his store and Lincoln is 
his clerk. For success in business the combina- 
tion cannot be pronounced a haj^py one. Offut 
was a swaggering, good-hearted fellow, too fond of 
the bottle and of boon companions at the tavern; 
Lincoln was untrained to business and given more 
to jesting and story-telling than to selling merchan- 
dise at a profit. Lincoln's own report of the matter 
runs: "In less than a year Offut's business was 
failing — had almost failed — when the Black Hawk 
war broke out." Let it be stated here that Lincoln 
in almost ascetic contrast with his surroundings, 
did not drink or smoke or squirt tobacco juice; 
still he could get intoxicated on a good joke or 
story of his own, and treat the crow^l to a horse- 
laugh, in which they woukl all join with a rustic 
sincerity. That was chiefly what was goin^ on 
at Offut's new store, the village's place of enter- 
tainment. 

New Salem had a good deal of the mushroom in 
its character, and Offut with his business was a 
kind of pre-figuremcnt of its destiny. There was 
an uncertain element about it, something unreal, 
grotesque, indicated in basing its existence upon 



lOS ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

the navigation of the Sangamon. Offut is a fan- 
tastic figure, and Lincoln is not without the same 
trait. Both he and the village take delight in 
humorous grotesquery, and both are in themselves 
grotesques, to a degree. Both are drifting together 
in a sea of fantasticalities at this time; we shall 
see this town sink, and Lincoln come to anchor 
after a flight from it. How often did he change 
his vocation at New Salem and think of other 
changes which he never made! 

And a deeper, yet concordant fact mu.st be noted. 
Profoundly it lay in the character of the village to 
show a skeptical tendency; in its very scanty list 
of books we hear of Paine, Voltaire and Volney. 
Lincoln partook of this trait also, which long left 
its mark upon him. Mentally adrift were the 
time, the place and the man — that was a part of 
his present Apprenticeship. He passes through a 
negative stage which questions and perchance 
denies the ancient foundations of belief. We may 
well call New Salem a negative town, and hence it 
vanished through its own inner dialectic. A kind 
of grotesque inferno it is then for Lincoln, who 
has to go through it and then rise out of it. Old 
Peter Cartwright, the frontier circuit-rider of 
Methodism, would call it a nest of infidels; in his 
later [)olitical campaign for Congress, when he ran 
against Lincoln, he did not fail to make the most 
of the latter's religious shortcomings. An un- 
settled existence the village led, internally and ex- 



NEW SALEM. 109 

tcrnally, mentally and physically. This skeptical 
spirit Lincoln reflected, had to reflect, in a piece of 
writing, in a long essay or book against the leading 
tenets of Christianity, which, it is said, he in- 
tended to print. He carried it around with him, 
took it to the store and discussed it with friends, 
one of whom (named Samuel Hill, his employer) 
snatched the manuscript and thrust it into the 
stove, where it was soon reduced to smoke and 
cinders, never to be resuscitated by its author. 
Thus was his negation negated, out of which fact 
he might have learned more than he ever did from 
the writings of the French skeptics, whose negation 
was also furiously negated in the flames of the 
French Revolution. And skeptical, negative New 
Salem itself will burn up, like Lincoln's book, 
not indeed in a sudden conflagration, but in a very 
rapitl fire kindled by old Father Time himself. 
And our Lincoln, badly scotched but not inciner- 
ated, we shall behold fleeing this new Hell-fire, 
in which he ought now to get some faith. 

Still New Salem, we must not forget, had its 
positive side which exerted an abiding influence 
upon Lincoln. In it he made an easy transition 
from farm-life to town-life, and thereby participated 
in a new institution of which he became an inde- 
pendent member through himself as individual. 
The Family had hitherto controlled him, absorbed 
him as it were, telling him what to do and taking 
the ijrocceds. From this intimate domestic bond 



110 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART FIRST. 

New Salem severs him, and compels him to asso- 
ciate himself anew, in his own right and through 
nis own activity. He is trained to make himself 
valid individually in a community not too large 
nor too small, wdiich is itself in a formative stage 
along with everybody in it. We have to consider 
then, that New Salem represents a landing-place 
in Lincoln's development into freedom. He be- 
comes a self-controlled atom which associates itself 
with others like it in a free communal hfe, he 
being able to make himself the leader, the first 
person of the place, really 'Hhe big buck of the 
lick," as he once called himself in a different 
situation. 

Through his New Salem experience Lincoln has 
tested himself wuth many yet not with too many, 
and has come to know himself to be the best man 
not only in brawn but in brain. The village 
Hercules triumphs in might, and also in mind. He 
reaches a consciousness of his true Self to the 
point of a strong belief in his own destiny. Mod- 
esty, yes; but equally a decided self-appreciation 
and self-reliance, for his fellow-villagers reflect his 
own worth back to him at every meeting. 

New Salem, just through its negative character 
helps to separate Lincoln from the indifferent level 
of the multitude. We see him beginning his rise 
out of the protoplasmic mass of the Folk, and be- 
coming one of its leaders, who first gets to be 
conscious of himself and then to be conscious of it 



THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER. Ill 

in its supreme though unconscious end, who learns 
to converse with it in its own speech and to shape 
in words its quite chaotic instincts which well up 
from the deepest sources. From this mass he has 
to separate and yet be of it, sharing its soul, speak- 
ing its tongue and finally voicing to it its own 
world-historical purpose. 

The Sangamon dries up, and New Salem with it ; 
the village never grows old but dies in its very 
efflorescence, fading away like and almost with 
blooming Ann Rutledge, Lincoln's earliest and 
fairest flower of love. 

III. 

The Village Schoolmaster. 

Intellectually the most important man in New 
Salem for Lincoln was the village schoolmaster, 
who knew somewhat more than Lincoln did, and 
seems to have been ever ready to impart his knowl- 
edge. We have already seen these pioneer 
teachers following the frontier settlements and 
weaving their influence into the career of Lincoln. 
The present one was evidently the most influential 
of all, though Lincoln appears never to have gone 
to school to him directly. Still he was the guide 
and the instructor of the youth in a number of 
branches for several years. Very striking and 
suggestive is that name of his, though seemingly 
accidental; he was truly a Mentor to our young 
Abraham eagerly seeking knowledge. Again the 



112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART FIRST. 

old Greek poet is recalled, from whom this very 
name has come down to New Salem, and has 
interlinked the ancient with the modern. So in 
our 'Homeric town on the Sangamon the sage 
Mentor again appears, whose form Pallas Athena, 
the Goddess of Wisdom assumes, speaking the 
words of hope to our youthful Telemachus, and 
giving him wise counsel as well as weighty instruc- 
tion. Ithacan Mentor, divinely voiced, has be- 
come the American schoolmaster in this little 
Lincolniad, and the latter may also hear betimes 
a celestial whisper, even if he cannot now see an 
actual epiphany of the Olympians. 

The name of Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster 
at New Salem, cannot be left out of Lincoln's 
biography. The two had first met and hatl found 
each other out on election day. Graham saw a 
tall raw-boned young fellow hanging about the 
polls and telling stories. The schoolmaster being 
the clerk, needed help, and felt the impulse to call 
the stranger, propounding to him the question: 
"Can you write?" Lincoln humorously drawled 
out: "I can make a few rabbit tracks." Graham 
knew that he had discovered his man and at once 
inducted him into office. He did its duties accept- 
ably and filled up the gaps of time with his yarns. 

Evidently a bond of friendship thenceforth was 
established l^ctween the two ; the schoolmaster had 
time to measure the capacity of the youth and to 
feel his aspiration. Lincoln through his writing 



THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER. 113 

and speaking had grown conscious of a deficiency 
in his training; it is possible that in some little 
incident the schoolmaster may have brought it 
to his notice. At any rate he became aware that 
speech is organized and ha^ its laws, of which he 
was ignorant. These, then, he must learn if he is 
ever going to be a writer or speaker. It dawns 
upon him that his next serious study must be 
Grammar, which he had never taken in his school- 
days; he seems hardly to have known of it then. 
He consult(id Graham, who encouraged him 
heartily, particularly "if you are going before 
the public." The strange fact comes out that the 
schoolmaster had no Grammar, that there was 
none in New Salem. Still he knew of one belong- 
ing to a man six miles from the village. Lincoln 
at once set out for the place on foot and succeeded 
in borrowing the book. It was a copy of Samuel 
Kirkham's English Grammar, well known through- 
out the West in early days, now quite supplanted 
and hurled down into the huge limbo of departed 
text-books. The copy used by Lincoln is still in 
existence, with some of his writing upon it. But 
what a boon to him ! His heart must have leaped 
with new hope as he read upon the title-page 
the promises, for the work will reveal to him not 
only the Parts of Speech but also "a new system- 
atick order of parsing," and likewise "a new 
system of punctuation and exercises in false 
syntax," all of which is designed "for the use of 

8 



114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PAIiT FIRST. 

schools and private learners " like himself. It 
is declared that he studied the book incessantly 
till he mastered it, and even committed to memory- 
its contents, with its numerous quotations of sage 
maxims and of poetry. 

A significant step in his culture we must deem 
it when he became acquainted with the structure 
of the language which he had before used instinc- 
tively, getting conscious of what he had always 
done unconsciously, ■ and thereby becoming able 
to handle the weapon which hithei-;to had rather 
handled him. Lincoln was ready not only to 
understand but to appreciate Grammar, which 
too often is foisted prematurely upon young minds, 
to their confusion and disgust. But Lincoln, now 
twenty-two years old, saw through it, absorbed and 
assimilated it with great avidity; as is reported by 
one who must have known the fact, namely, his 
bed-fellow who had to hold the book and hear 
him repeat the contents. Whenever he could not 
pull through a difficulty. Schoolmaster Graham 
was called upon and helpetl him out. Pleasant 
it must have been to the teacher to see the chaos 
of speech gradually getting ordered and slowly 
transforming itself into a linguistic cosmos in the 
mind of that uncouth lad of mighty aspiration. 

And let it be noted that among the pupils of 
Master Graham's School was Ann Rutledge, the 
budding flower of this little Homeric world. She 
must have seen Lincoln there, and known his 



THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER. 115 

talent as well as his tireless pursuit of culture. 
This desire she, too, possessed, and it must have 
been already a common bond of sympathy. That 
very copy of Kirkham's Grammar, still extant, 
which he studied so thoroughly and of which he 
became the owner, he afterwards gave to Ann 
Rutledge, who evidently wished to master it too, 
and so be on a par with him. Through her it has 
descended in her family as an inherited treasure. 
Upon its title page we read in Lincoln's hand- 
writing: Ann M. Rutledge is now learning Gram- 
mar. Such is the simple inscription, but under- 
neath it with its attendant circumstances we may 
read that these two souls are beginning to have 
a common hope and purpose, a union of hearts 
fortified by a union of intellects, out of which can 
spring the deepest happiness of life, or its tragedy. 
Nor can we help recalling once more in the pre- 
sent conjuncture that other Mentor who lived thou- 
sands of years ago in sunny Ithaca, and in whose 
shape the Goddess Pallas Athena appears before an- 
other struggling youth and speaks to him the word 
of wisdom — the brave Telemachus. He also is to 
set out on a new stage of his education, being 
directed to proceed to the sage Nest'or that he may 
hear about his father Ulysses and learn lore from 
ancestral example. So our new Mentor voicing 
the command of the Goddess on the banks of the 
Sangamon exclaims to the aspiring youth there: 
Study Grammar. And this youth, our Abraham 



116 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

Lincoln, hears the word and recognizes it to be 
the voice of the Goddess of Wisdom, and at once 
prepares to obey, for his heart is ready to hsten 
to the divine behest. But Telemachus is to get his 
education from the mouth of the wise old man, as 
there was no printed page then, and withal no 
Grammar. 

So we are led by the name to couple the two 
Mentors, the ancient and the modern, the one at 
Greek Ithaca, close to the Gods, and the other at 
American New Salem, rather remote from divinity, 
each of them being alike the chosen vehicle of the 
word of wisdom for two aspiring youths at the 
turning-point of destiny. 

IV. 

The Village Hercules. 

And now an Homeric contest is to take place in 
our Homeric village, which has, first of all, to dis- 
cover its athletic hero. This is bound to be none 
other than our strong-boned, huge-handed, over- 
topping Abe Lincoln. Ever memorable is the 
exploit of Hercules in his fight with Antaeus, the 
violent, gigantic son of Mother Earth, who always 
imparted to him renewed strength when his feet 
touched her terrene hotly. At last Hercules lifted 
him uj) and h(>l(l him high in the air, crushing him 
to death while separated from his might-giving 
mother. So the hero of New Salem, Abe Lincoln, 



THE VILLAGE HERCULES. 117 

will wrestle with a modern earth-son, hight Jack 
Armstrong, head bully of Clary's Grove; long the 
combat lasts, for Jack always lights on his feet 
again, after every powerful twist and whirl, till 
at last Abe grapples him by the throat and hoists 
him aloft, ''shaking him like a rag," says our 
worthy reporter, Hcrndon, who, if not actually 
present, heard the famous exploit often recounted 
by the villagers. 

Repeatedly the physical strength and athletic 
feats of Lincoln have been celebrated in the pre- 
ceding years; already in Indiana echoes of his 
prowess have come down, perpetuated and prob- 
ably magnified by his future renown. But at 
present in New Salem the new-comer must vindi- 
cate his position in a new way ; he must show him- 
self the best man of the bailiwick. It is true the 
best man in the frontier dialect did not get his 
superlative from moral excellence, but from 
physical. Again we think of the pioneer Greek 
age, when the same linguistic fact confronts us: the 
good man means the strong man, and virtue {arete) 
itself is martial rather than moral. Moreover, 
Offut, unquestionably the most enterprising head 
and the windiest mouth in the place, was seeking 
to develop the latent gifts of Lincoln, in whom 
he thoroughly believed. He goes boasting around 
the village that his long-legged awkward clerk 
"can outrun, whip, or throw down any man in the 
County of Sangamon." This was taken as a 



118 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

challenge to the entire community to bring out 
its "best man," and settle where the crown of 
glory belonged by the tug of actual conflict. An 
Olympic contest is thus preparing for the villages 
of New Salem and vicinity. 

A few miles distant from New Salem stood a 
belt of timber, called Clary's Grove, which harbored 
a set of young bloods of the frontier type, pug- 
nacious, of terrible name, yet not wholly depraved 
or malicious, often showing a charity to the poor 
and a gallantry to the fair, which recalls Robin 
Hood and his chivalrous foresters. They had 
their leader, their "best man," named Jack Arm- 
strong, whose primacy in this domain of sluggery 
was accepted by the whole adjacent country. The 
fame of the newly-arrived athlete was bruited 
about everywhere by the grand gasconader, Offut. 
The result was a challenge, backed by a stake of 
ten dollars, the proposition being that "Jack 
Armstrong was a better man than Abe Lincoln." 

All the village and all the vicinity assembled 
to witness this new Olympic contest, not now on 
the sunny banks of Greek Alpheus, but not far 
from the rippling Sangamon of mudd}^ fame. It is 
reported that the whole proceeding was very dis- 
tasteful to Lincoln with his Quaker strain; but his 
friends had compromised him and themselves, a 
back-down could not be thought of, and so he 
sailed in. The climax seems to have been when 
the tall Hercules in a final supreme effort, jncked 



THE VILLAGE HERCULES. 119 

up his antagonist as if another Antaeus, held him 
out at arm's length and shook him "like a rag." 
That was the triumphant end of the conflict, and 
we suppose that the assembled multitude tore 
their throats and the circumambient air with 
acclamations for the victor, while defeated bully- 
dom slunk off to its lair out of sight at Clary's 
Grove, wiser and seemingly repentant through the 
castigation. For hsten! "Jack Armstrong, his 
wife Hannah, and all the other Armstrongs" show 
ever afterwards*warm friendship for Lincoln, who 
in his turn would "rock Hannah's babies" while 
on a visit, and she would "fox his pantaloons" oft 
broken in spots. And in later times when a lawyer 
at Springfield, Lincoln saved "one member of the 
family from the gallows" tlii"ough his legal skill, 
though the fellow probably ought to have been 
hung. Thus the two grand protagonists of New 
Salem and Clary's Grove conquer a lasting peace 
between themselves and seemingly between their 
neighborhoods. 

And now in addition to being chief fabler and 
yarn-spinner of the place, our Lincoln has added 
another large sprig of laurel to his wreath of glory; 
he is acclaimed "the best man in town." A 
modern Olympic victor on the banks of the San- 
gamon we have to deem him, worthy of a high- 
soaring Pindaric hymn, but alack-a-day! there is 
no Pindar to sing it to New Salem and to all pos- 
terity. And our village Hercules of the back- 



120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

woods is not the fair-proportioned statuesque 
shape of Hellenic mould, but rather a grotesque 
figure doing grotesque things in a kind of grotesque 
world. This trait of his we must now grasp and 
take along with us to the end; a strand of strange 
grotesquery, not easy to adjust, runs through his 
whole life. Who can forget the man in his and 
the nation's sorest trial turning to grotesque humor 
for disburdening his oppressed heart, making 
mouths at destiny in her bitterest spite? In 
classic Homer even Zeus the Highest has his 
grotesque moods, particularly when he teases his 
very teasable spouse Juno. And Shakespeare, on 
the very top of his highest tragedy has the fool 
slip in as if to mock Fate at its uttermost. Lincoln, 
laden with the great purpose of his People and 
gifted with the deep moral earnestness of his time 
cannot help weaving through the Divine Order a 
thread of grotesquery to make it complete. 

But let us return to our youthful hero marching 
back from Clary's Grove to New Salem along the 
two miles' stretch of road amid a tumultuous crowd 
of whooping friends, who in a grand procession are 
bringing the new Olympic victor to his abode. 
This was probably at the present time the \'illage 
hostelry called Rutledge Tavern, named after and 
for a while kept by Ann Rutledge's father. The 
maiden must also be imagined there in her own 
home, taking many an admiring peep at the scene 
and its heroic central figure. For the Iliad of Troy 



THE VILLAGE HERCULES. 121 

town and also that of New Salem cannot be without 
its fair Helen. Let her then flit for a brief moment 
before our eyes in this little epical Lincolniad, pre- 
luding a short faint note of some deeper destiny 
hereafter. 

The village of New Salem, all unconscious of its 
poetic power, frequently re-enacts Homeric ex- 
ploits in a kind of serio-comic vein, though wholly 
naive in what it is doing. That perfectly natural 
grotesquery, so quaint and subtle, imparts an 
unaffected mock-heroic tinge to all its activities. 
Hardly would this communal trait be worth 
noticing, had it not passed over into Lincoln, in 
whom it was embodied and concentrated, and whose 
character and utterance it colored to the end of his 
days, even in the presence of the dignitaries of 
the nation and of the earth on high occasions of 
state in the White House, whereat the lofty-toned 
gentlemen of the Atlantic coast and elsewhere were 
often shocked. 

But now comes the supreme Homeric exploit, 
truly epical in its reach. In the olden time each 
little Greek community heard the call to arms 
against the Asiatic Trojans, and sent its con- 
tingent of warriors under its village hero to fight 
the barbarous foe. The summons to bloody war 
is now to be heard in New Salem also, volunteers 
will respond under the leadership of its strong 
man, Abraham Lincoln, and march out against 
the red-skinned barbarians, the American Indians. 



122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

But this Troy war is not to restore beautiful Helen, 
nor does it last ten years, though it has its woes 
and its hero. But let us devote its own canto to 
this new little Iliad, whose theme is the Black 
Hawk War, chiefly famed at the present time 
for its New Salem Achilles. 

V. 

The Black Hawk War. 

In 1832 when the Black Hawk war broke out, 
Abraham Lincoln was twenty-three years old, 
being already recognized as the peculiarly gifted 
young-man of the village. He was specially re- 
ceptive of this new experience of war, small enough, 
but leaving a strong impression upon him, and be- 
coming truly a part of his Apprenticeship. It 
was made by him into a kind of romantic back- 
ground for his story-telling during a long time. 
Sixteen years later when he was a Congressman at 
Washington, he won eminence by his stories and 
those pertaining to the Black Hawk war were 
singled out as the best. That event, so stimulat- 
ing to his young creative soul, he clustered over 
and over in masses of fable and romance, 
ever sprouting afresh with new turns from his 
myth-making fancy. The people of Lincoln's 
territory had been deeply stirred and indeed fright- 
ened by the occurrence, and responded with heart- 
felt interest to tales and novelettes born of its 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 123 

adventures. In this matter also we see Lincoln 
voicing the Folk-Soul, and fabling for it in its own 
form of utterance. 

Nor should we omit to notice in this connection 
a speech of Lincoln's in the National House of 
Representatives, July 28th, 1848 (Works I, p. 142), 
in which he assumes the mock-heroic attitude to- 
ward his own exploits in the Black Hawk war, by 
way of chaffing General Cass, whom, as their can- 
didate for President, the Democrats would pedestal 
as a military hero alongside General Taylor, the 
Whig candidate and victor of Buena Vista. Lin- 
coln being a Whig, breaks out into the following 
fantastic strain of burlesquery: 

"By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I am 
a military hero? Yes, Sir; in the days of the Black 
Hawk war I fought, bled and came away. Speak- 
ing of General Cass's career reminds me of my own. 
I was not at Stillman's defeat, but I was about as 
near it as Cass was to Hull's surrender; and, like 
him, I saw the place very soon afterward. It is 
quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had 
none to break ; but I bent a musket pretty badly on 
one occasion. If Cass broke his sword, the idea is 
that he broke it in desperation; I bent the musket 
by accident. If General Cass went in advance of 
me in picking huckleberries, I guess I surpassed 
him in charges upon the wild onions. If he saw 
any Hve, fighting Indians, it was more than I did; 
but I had a good many bloody struggles with the 



124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from loss 
of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry." 
Such was Lincoln's humorous echo of his heroic 
achievements in the Black Hawk war long after- 
ward. But let us go back to New Salem and watch 
the beginning of this episode. It had become 
manifest that OfTut was failing in business and 
must soon close. Lincoln was already looking for 
some other occupation; it is a mark of his self-re- 
liance as well as of his self-appreciation that the 
raw young fellow announced himself a candidate 
for the State Legislature early in March, 1832, 
and issued an address to the people of Sangamon 
County, feeling himself duly prepared to talk 
grammatically, which most of the members could 
not do. Evidently Offut has performed his func- 
tion in the life of Lincoln, having separated him 
from home, and given him an opportunity for a 
new stage of experience in the village of New Salem. 
In this Apprenticeship of Lincoln, Denton Offut 
therefore has his little niche, and is endowed with 
an inconspicuous immortality through his help 
of and faith in Abraham Lincoln, to whom he has 
given quite a little push forward in reaching that 
great goal which we all now see, but he then could 
not. Offut soon disappears without leaving a 
trace, investigation since conducted has failed to 
find whither he went from New Salem. Enough; 
ho has performed his ])art in the world's history, 
and also in this bi()grai)hy. 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 125 

But listen! what is this piece of newest news? 
A horseman comes riding into town one of these 
April days (1832), and brings a call to arms. 
The Indians under their chief, the much-feared 
Black Hawk, are on the war-path, have crossed the 
Mississippi into Illinois, and have invaded the 
Rock River country in the Northern part of the 
State. The Governor has issued a call for volun- 
teers and whisked it towards every point of the 
compass by trusty messengers, one of whom gal- 
lops through New Salem scattering hand-bills. 
Lincoln quits the store, stops his electioneering, 
and enlists. A company is formed and he is chosen 
captain. 

This election Lincoln always deemed a bright 
feather in his cap of glory, and he never failed to 
point to it, the occasion offering. In both his short 
autobiographic sketches he mentions it with a 
distinct cachinnation of delight. In the first and 
briefest he writes: "Then came the Black Hawk 
war; and I was elected a captain of volunteers— 
a success which gave me more pleasure than any 
I have had since," (written in 1859). The second 
and longest account speaks of the same event in 
the third person: "Abraham joined a volunteer 
company, and to his own surprise was elected 
captain of it. He says he has not since had any 
success in life which gave him so much satisfaction. 
He went to the campaign, served near three months, 
met the ordinary hardships of such an expedition, 



126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

but was in no battle," (written in 1860, before 
his election to the Presidency). Well may he take 
pleasure in this vote of confidence from his fellow- 
citizens, probably the first truly appreciative one 
in his life. A considerable body of grown men have 
selected him as their leader, in what seems an im- 
portant emergency. A little prelude we may enjoy 
in it of far-off mighty events which are soon to 
take up their march in History, when again Lincoln 
will be elected Captain. 

So our Abraham at the head of his little band 
steps forth proud and tall as the leading warrior 
of NewSalem, and our Illinois village on the fron- 
tier again insists on imitating Homer or parodying 
him in dead earnest, without knowing a word about 
him. For now under its local Hero or Strong Man 
it sends forth its contingent to "the bloody bridge 
of war" to fight against the Trojans and King 
Priam, who have re-appeared on the Western con- 
tinent along the banks of the Mississippi in the 
form of American savages and their chieftain 
Black Hawk, though the latter have indeed not 
stolen Helen or anything, but rather have been 
stolen from by these valorous Greeks of the Oc- 
cident. 

An earnest passing glance we may cast upon the 
Indian who has shown himself wholly unable to 
counteract or to assimilate the ever-encroaching 
Anglo-Saxon civilization. Black Hawk with true 
insight touches the ground of his people's decline: 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 127 

"My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold — 
notliing can be sold but such things as can be 
carried away." Still the Indians had sold their 
lands, hardly knowing what they had done. In- 
dividual ownership of the soil lay beyond their 
horizon. In the words of Black Hawk: "The 
Great Spirit gave it (the soil) to his children to live 
upon and to cultivate," not to traffic in it as a piece 
of movable property. "If they voluntarily leave 
it, then any other people have the right to settle 
upon it," thinks the Indian confined to the idea of 
his primitive Village Community, out of which he 
is totally unable to pass. It is the conflict of two 
institutional worlds, the outgoing and the incom- 
ing, there taking place along the border land. 
Lincoln has a part in this conflict, siding of course 
with his own race's civilization. How could he 
help it? For the struggle between the reel man 
and the white man is not merely a physical tussle, 
but a contest between two institutions, of which 
each colliding party is the bearer. The deepest 
fact of man is that world of institutions lying in 
his soul, out of which world he can no more take a 
leap than out of his skin. So Lincoln amid his 
other experiences gets a taste of that long Ameri- 
can struggle on the frontier betw^een what is usu- 
ally called barbarism and civilization — a struggle 
which has already lasted more than two hundred 
years, and in which his ancestors have participated 
for generations. He could hardly ■ helj) thinking 



128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

of his grandfather, also an Abraham Lincoln, who 
migrating to Kentucky as a pioneer, was slain by 
an Indian in ambush. 

Moreover our Abraham Lincoln now gets quite 
a little dip into military life, of which he is to have 
so large an experience in the future. To be sure 
there was no field for grand strategy in that petty 
hurly-burly of redskins and backwoodsmen on the 
border. But there had to be drill and military 
routine, since the West-Pointer was there and in 
command. In this regard it is interesting to note 
that Lincoln gets to know somewhat of the United 
States army officers — a class of men with whom he 
will have much to do hereafter in many notable 
ways. Colonel Zachary Taylor was there with im- 
portant duties, one of which was to quell a mutiny 
of rebellious volunteers in face of the enemy; him 
Lincoln afterwards supported for the Presidency. 
Lieutenant Albert Sidney Johnston was there, after- 
wards General in the Southern Confederacy who fell 
mortally wounded at Shiloh, battling against troops 
under the command of that obscure Illinois Captain, 
Abraham Lincoln, when he had risen to be Com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United 
States. A young Lieutenant of Artillery was there, 
Robert Anderson, to whom it was allotted to open 
the Civil War at Fort Sumter under that same 
"Commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the 
United States," whom he had mustered out of 
military service some twenty-nine years before 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 129 

that event. A most significant commentary on 
American Institutions is all this, with their unsur- 
passed power of bringing the right man to the front, 
though of the humblest birth, against the social 
privileges and prejudices of rank and wealth. 
Nor can we help noting the number of Southern men 
in the list of army officers at this time, headed by 
Scott and Taylor. This fact will have its por- 
tentous significance for Lincoln and the Nation 
in 1861. Alread}^ it had been observed that the 
South largely furnished the officers of the United 
States army, while the North furnished largely, 
though not wholly, the rank-and-file. This may 
well be deemed a phase of the split already setting 
in between the aristocratic and the democratic 
elements of the land. And may we not bring out 
into the light the typical fact that Lincoln, chosen 
here by his people in a very small way, but here- 
after to be chosen in a large and the largest way, 
now first appears among an unchosen but perma- 
nent officialdom, and gets the experience of the 
most undemocratic yet a necessary part of the 
American government. Such experience will be- 
stead him well in his supreme emergency. 

And now let us listen to another and even 
more surprising report about one of these young 
Army-Lieutenants, also of Southern birth, affable, 
of fine aristocratic bearing, and very talented, 
who, it is declared, mustered into the service of 
the United States Abraham Lincoln and his 



130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

rather democratic company for the Black Hawk 
war: 

"Then a tall, gawky, slab-sided, homely young 
man, dressed in a suit of blue jeans, presented him- 
self as captain of a company of recruits, and was 
sworn in by Jefferson Davis." (Life of Davis by 
his wife, Vol. I, p. 132, — written of course after 
the Civil War). 

It would seem, then, that the first oath taken by 
Lincoln to support the Constitution of the United 
States was administered to him by Jefferson Davis, 
future President of the Southern Confederacy, who 
had taken the same oath. Which of the two kept it 
best is a question upon which History has had a 
good deal to say, and upon which it is destined to 
say a good deal more. But imagine "tall, gawky, 
slab-sided, homely" Abraham Lincoln holding up 
that enormous hand of his to the dapper, well- 
groomed, aristocratic Jefferson Davis out there in 
the backwoods of Illinois, and then take a glimpse 
into the seeds of time and see how they grow. 
Might Davis, as he looked upon that awful hand 
held higher than his head and backed by long, 
swinging, scythe-like arms of Destiny, have had 
some far-off presentiment that it would come 
down upon him heavily one day for failure to ob- 
serve that very oath which he was then administer- 
ing? Davis with his friends, as the world knows, 
will maintain that he is within his right and oath 
when he tries to break up the Union and its Consti- 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 131 

tiition, to which he has sworn allegiance; let us 
not argue with him ; still the Big Hand will descend 
like Fate and crush his Idea, but not him for- 
tunately, for who is not glad that he livetl to tell 
the tale of his deeds in his own way, to his heart's 
content? And let us add that Lincoln would be 
the first to excuse, yea to laugh at the above-cited 
words, rather disparaging in tone but not untrue 
literally, of the amiable biographer who so forc- 
ibly expresses her aristocratic contempt for the 
colossal antagonist of her husband. 

Let it now be added that the foregoing incident 
is not capable of documentary proof, though prob- 
able. The muster-roll of Lincoln's company is 
not on file at the Adjutant-General's office where 
it ought to be. Moreover the record shows that 
Jefferson Davis had a furlough from March 2Gth, 
to August 18th, 1832, which covers the time of 
Lincoln's service. Hence the doubt as to their 
meeting. But according to the evidence of Davis 
himself confirmed by many volunteers of the Black 
Hawk campaign who saw him and recollect him, 
he must have been there, doubtless hastening back 
to service when the war broke out. This is not only 
probable, but a young Lieutenant could hardly 
do otherwise; not only he but his fellow-officers 
and also his own soldiers in the ranks would say 
that it was no time ''to be absent on furlough." 
Mrs. Davis doubtless reports the recollection of 
her husband. So we can say: not directly prov- 



132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

able but probable is the unique scene of towering 
Abraham Lincoln holding up his gigantic hand to 
and perchance over Jefferson Davis to take the oath 
of allegiance to the Government of the United 
States. 

VI. 

Candidate Lincoln. 

It has been already stated that Lincoln had 
announced himself as a candidate for representa- 
tive in the Illinois Legislature when his election- 
eering was suddenly interrupted by the Black Hawk 
war. Moreover he had issued "an Address to the 
People of Sangamon County" in order to make 
known "my sentiments in regard to local affairs," 
national affairs, such as tariff and bank, being 
omitted. This manifesto is interesting from several 
points of view. In style it is carefully written, 
and on the whole well worded, even if a little stiff 
for Lincoln, for there is not a joke in it, nor a streak 
of humor to our perception; no anecdote, no story, 
only one little mental grimace. This is not the 
mimic Lincoln of the country-store, of the street- 
corner, of the stump ; he feels that he must now be 
dignified and formal like other empty-pated figure- 
heads who are running for the Legislature. The 
piece was probably corrected in grammar and style 
by the schoolmaster. Mentor Graham; McNamar, 
the betrothed of Ann Rutlcdge, claimed likewise 
to have had a hand in correcting it. Upon its com- 



CANDIDATE LINCOLN. 133 

position as the first-born writ of his political career 
the young author must have spent a good deal of 
labor; also he could not help reading it with a cer- 
tain delight to all his friends, who of course admired 
it. At their urgent request, no doubt, to which 
he bashfully but joyfully yielded, it was printed 
in the form of a hand-bill and scattered over San- 
gamon County, with no small expectations of its 
powerful effect upon the voters. 

As with this candidacy the political life of Lin- 
coln opens, so with this Address he begins to use 
the Printed Page to further his political purpose. 
Already in Indiana it is said that some of his juve- 
nile articles had been published in newspapers. 
But the road on which he now starts he never aban- 
dons till death itself halts him. This product is 
properly his first appeal to the Folk-Soul to make 
him their lawgiver, their representative, their 
mediator. As yet the field is small, and the issue 
not so important, but the one will widen till it em- 
braces the whole country, and the other will grow 
till it becomes not only national but world-histor- 
ical. 

What, then, were the main points of this first 
Address? As before said it purposely avoids na- 
tional topics, and confines itself to local questions. 
(1) He dwells particularly upon the need of inter- 
communication, and hence puts great stress upon 
internal improvements of which the supreme 
example is the Sangamon. This river will open a 



134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— FART FIRST. 

connection with the IlHnois, with the Mississippi, 
with the Gulf, with the Ocean, with the World. 
Such was the grand outlook which Lincoln unrolls 
to the New Salemites, who voted for him almost 
to a man, without regard to party. Lincoln gives 
soberly the details how the channel can be cleared 
of drift, straightened by a little digging, deepened 
by a little dredging — and then we have a navigable 
stream just for a small appropriation. Still the 
whole scheme was chimerical, there was not enough 
water falling from Heaven into the valley of the 
Sangamon to float any regular traffic. Though 
New Salem voted it up, the county as a whole 
voted it down. (2) The Address grapples with 
another popular question — the limitation of the 
rate of interest. The farmers were oppressed by 
usurers and were crying for relief by means of legis- 
lation — a very old remedial method. Now Lincoln 
knew that any legal restraint upon interest would 
simply increase the burden to those who most 
needed help. And yet he favors a law which will 
work both ways: it is to be evaded in extreme cases, 
but otherwise is to be enforced. Thus our fledg- 
ling of a legislator will enact a law wherein ''means 
can always be found to cheat the law," and yet to 
execute it also. So our Lincoln in his legislative 
capacity proposes to ride two horses at once run- 
ning in opposite directions. Lot him be beaten 
at the polls, decree the Powers, and set him to 
studying the law before he starts to making it, for, 



C AX DID ATE LINCOLN. 135 

to ssij the least, his ignorance of it is fundamental. 
We may note, however, that this patent reversible 
gimcrack of a law which is made to turn itself in- 
side out and still to go on working, drops away 
from Lincoln's career henceforth. (3) The Ad- 
dress says a good word for education "as the most 
important subject which we as a people can be 
engaged in." One thinks that he sought to give 
the coming generation a better chance than he 
ever had. His chief argument is noteworthy, in 
view of his own past, urging "that every man may 
be enabled to read the histories of his own and other 
countries, by which he may duly appreciate the 
value of our free institutions," whose safety, indeed, 
depends upon the Printed Page, nor does he omit 
the advantage of "all being able to read the Scrip- 
tures for themselves," though this is put second 
in line. (4) There is a personal touch in the final 
paragraph which declares his highest ambition to be 
"that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, 
by rendering myself worthy of their esteem." 
Certainly this gives a little glimpse into Lincoln's 
earliest aspiration, though "I was born and have 
ever remained in the most humble walks of life." 
That is Lincoln, the rise from the very bottom 
to the highest summit of the nation and of the age. 
Then a last word of resignation: "But if the good 
people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in 
the background, I have been too familiar with dis- 
appointments to be much chagrined." As we 



136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

understand him, he rather forbodes defeat, still 
he is going to take his first plunge into the Ocean 
of the People, the vast protoplasmic mass, in which 
his real work lies, and which he is to inform with 
its supreme world-historical purpose. (The whole 
Address is given in Lincoln's Works, by Nicolay 
and Hay, being the first printed piece of his com- 
position). 

So our modern Homeric hero returns from his 
exploits in the Black Hawk war and asks his fel- 
low-citizens to elect him Captain in an entirely 
new vocation. He wishes to start in his civil 
career, which is really the one of his heart, and 
which will give him his life-task. He will in time 
get to be commander-in-chief, military indeed, 
but, what is much more significant, supra-mili- 
tary, commanding war itself, if need be, against 
war, and winning rather the most positive victory 
of the age. So it befell that Lincoln, after his dis- 
charge from military service on the border against 
the barbarians, returned directly to peaceful, 
idyllic New Salem, now the lodestone of his career 
for a number of reasons public and private, being 
acclaimed the hero of the village by a new deed of 
fame with its fresh sprig of laurel. He reached 
the much desired spot in August, 1832, having 
been absent since his enlistment in the preceding 
April. This was his three months' service and 
may have vaguely suggested the period of his first 
call for volunteers in 18G1. He renewed his can- 



CANDIDATE LINCOLN. 137 

didacy for the Legislature already announced, and 
his captaincy in the Black Hawk war must have 
been a stirring item in his electioneering capital. 

In connection with Lincoln's candidacy we have 
to clironicle a new and very exhilarating event in 
the life of New Salem which helped raise the delu- 
sion of a navigable Sangamon to the boiling point 
of delirium. The incident occurred a little while 
before the outbreak of the Black Hawk war, and 
Lincoln took part in the excitement, proclaiming 
as his chief political tenet the improvement of the 
Sangamon, to the unstinted applause of his fellow- 
villagers. And behold! what is this which appears 
to them gathered on their bluff and peering down 
the river? In the early spring of 1832 they see an 
actual steamboat puffing up the stream at high 
flood to New Salem, and then pushing on to a land- 
ing near Springfield. The latter place gave a 
grand reception and ball at the court house to the 
bold sailors who had brought the vessel all the way 
from Cincinnati. The Talisman, for such was its 
magical name, evoked great excitement along the 
Sangamon Valley, and had the power of putting 
the inhabitants under a spell of blinding enchant- 
ment, causing them to lose, if not their eye-sight, 
at least their mind-sight. In a week the high 
waters were running out and the boat had to 
hurry down stream, reaching the Illinois river with 
great difficulty, chiefly through the dexterity of its 
two pilots, one of whom was Lincoln. It too liad 



138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

trouble at Rutledge's dam like the flat-boat. He 
had also assisted in bringing it up stream, so that 
he was becoming well acquainted with the channel 
of the Sangamon — knowledge which he will soon 
bring into play. Indeed he had already studied 
the stream with care, as we see by his first political 
document, already considered. 

Let the outcome of the election be stated as far 
as it interests us: Candidate Lincoln is defeated. 
In both his autobiographic notices he declares 
with just pride that this was the only time he was 
ever beaten by the people. His further declara- 
tion runs: "His own precinct, however, casting 
its votes, 277 for him and 7 against him," evidenced 
his popularity at New Salem, and especially that 
of his cause, the improvement of the Sangamon. 
But the rest of the county thought otherwise, for 
the Sangamon could not wash every man's farm, 
nor float a steamboat to every village. Moreover 
it was a Presidential year (1832) in which a straight 
ticket is usually voted by both parties. Lincoln 
had become a Henry Clay Whig, though he seems 
to have been a Jackson man or (boy) in 1828. Hence 
he says with pardonable self-gratulation: "the pre- 
cinct the autumn afterward gave a majority of 
115 to General Jackson over Mr. Clay." 

On the whole this judgment of the People in 
defeating Lincoln this time will have to be affirmed. 
That double-acting, reversible law of usury was a 
poor recommendation for a legislator. The San- 



THE BOOK OF THE LAW. 139 

gamon cannot be made a navigable stream, improve 
it as we may, on account of a primary deficiency of 
the fluid which floats vessels, even if it has floated 
Lincoln into New Salem, its greatest act of naviga- 
tion. "Go back, go back to your studies, especially 
to the study of the law," cries the Genius presiding 
over his destiny, "and I shall whirl down to you 
out of the Heavens, an unexpected book, nothing 
less than the greatest preparatory law-book ever 
written, through which you can begin to get your- 
self ready for your coming vocation." Lincoln 
could not help obeying as the pressure of stern 
necessity lay upon him; but let our reader weigh 
the miraculous message, awaiting, with some ex- 
pectancy and possibly with no little dubitation, 
the fulfilment of its promise, which is now to be 
recounted. 

VII. 

The Book of the Law. 

A new Book which we may call theBook of the 
Law, is in these days delivered into the hands of 
Abraham Lincoln, not exactly by th(i Suj^reme 
Giver in person, as long ago happened to the old 
Hebrew legislator on Mount Sinai, but in a way 
which we may call Chance, if we like, or if we are 
religiously inclined, Providence. Let it not be 
forgotten that Lincoln has often been hailed the 
new Moses by people strongly imbued with the 
Old Testament, chiefly for his leadership of the 



140 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

black race out of their bondage, and also of the white 
race to a higher freedom. And a chief hand he 
certainly took in bringing forth a new Law and 
transformed Constitution for his country. 

Some four years and more have passed since the 
Book of Institutions dropped into his Indiana life, 
making an epoch in his development. But that 
Book, we must suppose, he had to leave behind 
with its owner when he migrated to Illinois. Since 
then he has seemingly done very little legal reading, 
so deeply occupied has be been with his river- 
nymph, Sangamona, with the alarms of war, with 
the game of politics, with the ups and downs of 
that feverish settlement. New Salem. One gift 
of his, indeed, that of story-telling, has been al- 
ways in demand, and has largely absorbed his 
mind's activity, since the response to it was imme- 
diate, intoxicating, triumphant. But really his 
art was not the end but a means, existing not 
for its own sake, but to be an instrument of his 
deeper destiny. So he must be turned back into 
the serious purpose of life, which was that he be- 
come the leatlcr of his people to a new institutional 
liberty. A little too much drifting freedom he 
has enjoyed in that drifting community of New 
Salem. Indeed in a number of ways, econom- 
ically, politically, yea, intellectually, he has almost 
drifted to zero, to downright negation, which is 
finding its expression in his skepticism. But upoil 
such a world-view falls now a peculiar experience 



THE BOOK OF THE LAW. 141 

which suggests somewhat of a supernal Prevision 
over him. And at least so much can be declared: 
a new Book is brought to him, the complement, 
yea, the fulfilment of that Book of Institutions 
which he has been compelled to leave behind in 
Indiana. 

Some few months after his political defeat, 
probably during the summer of 1833, a man in a 
covered wagon with family and household effects 
drove up in front of Lincoln's store and begged 
him to buy an old barrel full of trumpery for which 
he had no room in his straitened vehicle. He never 
said what it contained, and Lincoln, in kindness of 
heart, bought it, paying him, "I think, half a dollar 
for it." The man who was apparently moving to 
the West, at once vanished with his wagon into 
vacuity, having fulfilled in his passage through 
New Salem his considerable part in determining 
the career of Abraham Lincoln. For when the bar- 
rel was turned upside down and emptied on the 
floor some days afterwards, at the bottom of all 
the rubbish came forth a complete edition of Black- 
stone's Commentaries, just the book of all others 
needful for his next step at that time. A most 
valuable and unexpected prize had been secreted 
in that old barrel, and brought to New Salem by 
some unknown hand, and delivered to Lincoln in 
person — what shall we say to it? A fortunate 
accident men would call it now, having little faith 
in the Gods", but may it please the reader to look 



142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST, 

back again at old Homer (as already we have 
glimpsed old Moses), who would surely say that 
such an occurrence came from above, being the 
work of Pallas Athena, who in the guise of a stran- 
ger appeared to the man in the wagon with the 
mysterious barrel, and constrained him by divine 
command to dispose of it at the store in the vil- 
lage for fifty cents. Thus the Goddess is seen to 
be always looking out for her special ward, Tele- 
machus Lincoln, and now provides for him at the 
right moment the right kind of Printed Page in 
the slack days of New Salem. 

Lincoln himself knew well the value of the prize 
he had drawn in this strange lottery of the Gods, 
providential enough to rouse a ground-swell of 
that superstition which the illuminated biog- 
rapher has so often traced somewhat con- 
descendingly in his character. Still the reporter of 
the foregoing occurrence has not told these inner 
and deeper surges of Lincoln's soul seldom break- 
ing out to the surface in speech, but has preserved 
his own statement of the mighty outward impact 
which he received from the new-found book: "I 
began to read those famous works, and I had 
plenty of time, for during the long sunmier days, 
when the farmers were busy with their crops, my 
customers were few and far between. The more I 
read, the more intensely interested I became. 
Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly 
absorbed. I read until I devoured them." Truly 



THE BOOK OF THE LAW. 143 

it is the right book fallen as it were out of the skies 
at the right moment ; it is as a whole appropriated, 
internalized, made an integral element of his in- 
tellectual equipment for the future, he having 
plenty of leisure just now for the task. 

And yet Blackstone's Commentaries is not such 
an easy book to master. It reads not hke the 
newspaper or novel, and there is a good deal of it. 
But we see that Lincoln was prepared. We 
-recollect how he read the Revised Statutes of Indi- 
ana back on Little Pidgeon Creek, and the import- 
ant political and legal documents therewith pub- 
Ushed. Such was his introduction to the law and 
its peculiar nomenclature. That book however, 
was confined to the United States and their Ameri- 
can origins. But in Blackstone he reaches back to 
their remoter source in English law and history — a 
vast widening of his horizon. He now has come 
to the well-head of his country's Institutions, and 
drinks of it with intense delight. For Lincoln had 
a genetic mind, truly creative on its political side; 
in Blackstone he could feed his creativity witness- 
ing and re-creating in thought the birth and devel- 
opment of the institutional world that lay about 
him. Perchance he could see the original fountain 
of those Indiana Statutes, for they were all made 
by men trained in Blackstone and the English 
Law. Surely a divinely sent gift of Pallas Athena, 
be it given at Ithaca or at New Salem, we may 
deem this Book of the Law. 



144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

And let us behold Lincoln absorbed in his Black- 
stone, lying on the village green during the hot 
days of summer in the shade of a tree, not far from 
his store, this being allowed to take care of itself, 
which it can easily do, having almost no custom. 
Upon his back he often reposes with his bare feet 
stuck up the trunk of the tree, his favorite atti- 
tude for concentration. Reports an observer: 
"His tow-linen i)antaloons I thought about five 
inches too short in the legs, and fretjuently he had 
but one suspender, no vest or coat. He wore a 
calico shirf," and on his head, when he arose, was 
slouched "a straw hat, old style, without any 
band." Very unconventional and regardless of 
the outer world must our Lincoln have been while 
immersed in the study of his new Book of the Law. 
He would read and recite to himself while walk- 
ing to and from Springfield, out of the Printed 
Page before him ; when darkness came on, he would 
go to the cooper's shop, the friendly owner having 
given permission to make a fire with the refuse 
shavings, by whose light he would read "far into 
the night." Amid his duties he would seize his 
book if leisure came to him, were it only ''five min- 
utes' time." 

The strange epiphany of this Book of the Law 
dropping directly upon Lincoln's path, evidently 
threw a mighty influence over him, recalling in a 
kind of admonition, and emphasizing vividly the 
goal of his career, so that he starts out afresh toward 



LINCOLN LV BUSLXESS. 145 

it, with an ever-renewing zest and tireless industry. 
In one direction at least he begins to get settled 
in that unsettled New Salem. 

(The preceding account is derived from the St. 
Louis artist, Mr. A. J. Conant, to whom Lincoln 
told the story, while sitting for his portrait in 1860. 
See Miss Tarbell's Life of Lincoln, I, p. 93. It 
should be added that there is another report, ac- 
cording to which Lincoln borrowed his Blackstone 
from the lawyer of a neighboring town. Indeed 
two borrowings of the work from two different 
men, each of a different town, have become cur- 
rent in the Folk-Lore about the early Lincoln in 
Illinois, ever getting more diversified and diver- 
gent). 

VIII. 

Lincoln in Business. 

Indeed! Now it may be predicted that our 
"piece of floating driftwood," having drifted into 
business, will get anchored at last, or will make of 
it a drifting business and float soon into bankruptcy, 
particularly in that village, itself adrift. Still 
another shifting part, then, Lincoln has to play 
during these variegated years, 1832-4, in addition 
to those parts already mentioned— boat-man, clerk, 
athlete, soldier, fabulist and the rest ; it is said that 
he even went back to rail-splitting for a while dur- 
ing this time. But now he is to become a merchant 
without money, a capitalist without capital, and 



146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

live another chapter in his Book of Experience al- 
ready getting bulky. 

Lincoln's political defeat was probably the best 
thing for him at the time ; he was not yet ready to 
go to the State Legislature, so the presiding Powers 
turned him back to study and greater maturity. 
Yet he must find something to do, having no occu- 
pation and no work after the election. He evi- 
dently liked clerking in a store for its many oppor- 
tunities of seeing people, of practising his gifts of 
discussion and story-telling, and specially for the 
leisure it gave him to continue his reading. But 
there was no appreciative Offut to hire him in any 
one of the four stores of the place. It was suggested 
that he become a blacksmith, for which nature had 
fitted him l^y his great strength and by the wide 
swing of his arms for wielding the sledge hammer. 
But it has been handed down that Lincoln did not 
take kindly to hard labor ; an old farmer said he was 
no hand to pitch into work "like killing snakes;" 
he preferred to be inwardly occupied. The country 
store as the center of the village is his true place; 
in a store he must be and so at last he succeeds in 
buying one by simply giving his promissory note. 
Since he could not be clerk, he was going to be pro- 
prietor. 

Thus, however, he ventures upon a new and 
treacherous sea, that of indebtedness, of which he 
is to have many a bitter experience. But it was so 
easy at the start to get things without paying for 



LINCOLN IN BUSINESS. 147 

them, he being quite unconscious of the day of 
reckoning. So easy was it that he buys two other 
stores on credit, whose owners wished to get rid of 
them — not a good sign of the town's prosperity 
or of his coming success. A partner too, he picks 
up, by the name of Berry, who had no good name 
in the community, being a dissipated and riotous 
young fellow. The firm of Lincoln & Berry had 
acquired a considerable stock of liquors of which 
the junior partner was the chief salesman and best 
customer. Lincoln, very temperate in his habits, 
never tasting strong drink or even using tobacco, 
not only found leisure but created it for his studies, 
at the expense of strict attention to business. 
He scoured the neighborhood for books, and got 
hold of a Rollin and a Gibbpn, which he read while 
with Berry. If he mastered those two works, he 
certainly gained no contemptible outfit in Ancient 
History. The great states and the great person- 
ages of Greece and Rome had at least been intro- 
duced to him. We may query whether the skep- 
tical tendency which he showed about this time 
was fed by Gibbon's famous chapters against 
Christianity. To Gibbon may be added the 
other great disbelievers of the Eighteenth Century : 
the Frenchmen Voltaire and Volney, and the 
American Tom Paine, writings of all of whom are 
declared to have fallen into Lincoln's hands at this 
time, and to have been the subject of discussions 
at the store and tavern, Lincoln, of course, tak- 



148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

ing part, and even writing the book already alluded 
to. 

We have to infer that he was not a good store- 
keeper. The establishment evidently fell in twain, 
the drinking department being presided over by 
Berry, and the story-telling department conducted 
by Lincoln. The latter, however, was always 
grasping after something to be learned. So we 
must set down that in these days Lincoln had 
plenty of time to go a-fishing with Jack Kelso, 
an incessant spouter of Burns and Shakespeare, 
for whose beauties he had a genuine appreciation. 
Otherwise Jack is reported to have been a shiftless 
vagabond, living by little odd-jobs, and chiefly 
by sponging on the charitable, notably on Lincoln. 
But he is the man who has come down to us as hav- 
ing inducted Lincoln into a new poetic world quite 
different from anything which he had previously 
known. Particularly Shakespeare will remain a 
companion of Lincoln for many years. Thus our 
apprentice seems to be taking quite a course in 
History and Literature while store-keeping. Novels 
too he read with delight, having a decided relish for 
fiction. Newspapers were also within his reach, 
and the politician devoured them with avidity. 
Desultory indeed is such a training, but it has the 
considerable advantage of not being foisted upon 
the student, who in the present case makes his 
college course as he goes along, selecting his 
materials, scanty enough, from his environment. 



I 



LINCOLN IN BUSINESS. 149 

But how many youths would be equal to such a 
task? 

Behold, a new but small business comes to him ; 
he is made Postmaster of New Salem, May 7th, 
1833, presenting the marvel of a- Whig holding 
office under Democratic Andrew Jackson. The 
mail came irregularly, but it averaged once a week, 
and it is stated that "he carried the office around 
in his hat," which remained his personal receptacle 
for letters and papers through life. There is little 
doubt that Lincoln took the office for the sake of 
the opportunity it gave him of reading the current 
news and literature of the day. He had, it seems, 
the permission, or perchance the privilege of 
perusing the printed matter, newspapers, and maga- 
zines, which came through the mails. We must 
recollect the political excitement of this time: 
nullification in South Carolina, and her conflict 
with President Andrew Jackson; great speeches 
in the Senate by Webster and Calhoun, oratorical 
protagonists of Union and Disunion; the contro- 
versy over the National Bank; the discussion of 
the tariff question. So we may see Postmaster 
Abraham Lincoln when the mail has arrived, care- 
fully removing the wrapper from every newspaper, 
which he reads and then puts back into its wrapper, 
depositing it in his Post Office Hat for defivery to 
its subscriber who may live miles in the country. 
So too, he treats the less frequent magazine, and 
perchance the stray paper-covered novel whose 



150 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

leaves he Vvdll kindly cut for its owner. Truly 
Lincoln is swallowing his whole environment, all 
its knowledge, all its vocations, all its institutions; 
if not the cosmic egg, at least the New Salem 
one he will suck dry, no doubt to the neglect of 
that spirit-confining business of his. One gap in 
New Salem as well as in Lincoln, must be marked: 
we hear of little or no music in their existence, ex- 
cept the sweet voice of Ann Rutledge who was a 
soulful singer of ballads and hymns. But where 
is the village fiddler with his jigs, reels, hornpipes, 
from the "Devil's Dream" to ''Rory 0' Moore"? 
It is said that Lincoln found one at Vandalia when 
he went there as representative, and was charmed 
by his art. Even this musician has been hunted 
up and has handed in his report from which we 
snip a shred: "I would take the fiddle with me 
when I went over to visit him (Lincoln, in his 
quarters at Vandalia) and when he grew weary of 
telling stories, he would ask me to give him a tmie, 
which I never refused to do." 

Lincoln meanwhile has quite abandoned the 
store to Berry, who drank himself to death in the 
business, as he died not long after. The stock of 
groceries had run low and was sold on credit to 
two brothers, both scamps, who soon absconded. 
The result of Lincoln's mercantile career was a pile 
of debts with no money to pay them; all the accu- 
mulated obligations of the business for two years 
fell to his share in the end. Thus a heavv burden 



LINCOLN IN BUSINESS. 151 

was put upon him at his economic start in Hfe and 
worried him for many years before it was paid, for 
he assumed all the liabilities. He was in the habit 
of comparing it with the State debt, for Illinois 
made a wild venture not dissimilar to that of Lin- 
coln in New Salem, who will help the whole State 
do what he did, by his vote in the Legislature — 
favoring the so-called public improvements, such as 
the improvement of the Sangamon. 

But that is a little ^head of our narrative. At 
present we are to see that rock of Tantalus, in the 
shape of an ever-threatening debt, which Lincoln 
has gotten suspended over his head for a consider- 
able part of his life-time and which seems always 
ready to fall down crushingly upon him and his — 
the fateful outcome of his venture in merchantry at 
New Salem. Says his partner, lierndon: "Even 
as late as 1848 he sent to me from Washington por- 
tions of his salary as Congressman to be applied on 
the unpaid remnant, of the Berry & Lincoln in- 
debtedness," — that is, fifteen years afterward, and 
it still ran on — "but in time he extinguished it all, 
even to the last penny." Penitential rock of 
Tantalus hung in mitl air by Zeus over the mortal 
victim for his transgression the old Greek poet 
Pindar fabled in his mythical world, and sang a 
strain applicable to Lincoln and any other Tantalus 
overcanopied with debt: "Therefore shall he 
be forsaken of all joy, and be made a wanderer 
from happiness." 



152 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

Once indeed a piece of that suspended Tantalus 
rock broke loose, fell down with a crash and smote 
him to the earth for a time, in the shape of one of 
those promissory notes which came due and was 
not paid. Lincoln's horse, saddle and bridle, and 
worst of all, his surveying instruments, by which 
he was slowly earning his economic freedom, were 
levied upon, seized by the constable and exposed 
for sale to the highest bidder. But kind-hearted 
Uncle Jimmy Short, a farmer of Sand Ridge, hear- 
ing of the trouble and feeling the impulse to be a 
small Providence, hastened to the rescue, and bought 
back all the articles at the sale for 120 dollars, 
and then restored them to the owner. But many 
such beetling crags still hang over Lincoln's head, 
minatory; well may a snake-like anxiety keep 
crawling over him, lest the next time such a provi- 
dential interference in his behalf may not take 
place. Let it be added that Lincoln when Presi- 
dent rewarded his benefactor with a small office, 
which the latter filled, we hope, without detri- 
ment to the public service. 

IX 

The Two Calhouns. 

In this same eventful year, 1833, two gentlemen 
by the name of Calhoun, became interwoven with 
the course of Lincoln's fife. Each of them also 
was called John Calhoun, indeed each of them has 



THE TWO CALHOUN S. 153 

come down to posterity designated as John C. Cal- 
houn. The one was a Southerner and belonged to 
South Carolina, as all the world knows; the other 
was a Northerner, in fact a New Englander who 
had migrated to Springfield, Illinois. Both, how- 
ever, were- Democrats, and took a political turn 
quite opposite to that of Lincoln. 

First we shall cast a glance at what John Cald- 
well Calhoun of South Carolina was doing. On 
Januaiy 22, 1833, two days after the introduction 
of Jackson's Force Bill, the following resolutions 
were offered by Calhoun in the Senate of the 
United States : 

(1) ''Resolved that the people of the sev- 
eral States comprising these United States are 
united as parties to a Constitutional Compact, to 
which each State acceded as a separate Sovereign 
community." 

Here is the assertion that the Union is a Com- 
pact between the Single-States, and that each 
Single-State as sovereign took part in the Compact 
and acceded to the same Now it is this view of 
the Union which Lincoln, we may suppose, begins 
already in 1833 to grapple with in thought, and 
which he is at last to meet by argument and 
then by force in 18G1. 

(2) "Resolved that the people of the several 
States . . . delegated to the General Govern- 
ment certain tlefinite powers . . . and that the 
same Government is not made the final judge of 



154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

the powers delegated to it . . . but each State 
has the right to judge for itself, as well of the in- 
fraction as of the mode and measure of redress." 

There is another Resolution to the same general 
effect, but these two (somewhat abbreviated as 
they stand here) tell the national wrestle of the 
time, and show the idea which was discussed in 
all the newspapers, and on the street-corners and 
in the village-stores of every nook of the land. 
The Folk-Soul is struggling over the question 
which may be thus stated: Which has the primacy 
in our form of Government: the Single-State or 
the Union? Clearly the doctrine of Calhoun as- 
serts the primacy of the Single-State, which has 
the right of initiative in withdrawing from the 
Union, or the right of Secession. 

Now the curious fact comes to the surface that 
it is just this problem which Lincoln will be called 
upon to deal with when he enters the Presidency 
twenty-eight years later. The chief burden of his 
first Inaugural (18G1) is the Primacy of the Union: 
"No State of its own mere notion can lawfully get 
out of the Union." One may be permitted to 
think that he must have deeply pondered the 
subject when the air was resounding all over the 
land with the words of Calhoun: ''each State has 
the right to judge for itself" in disregard of the 
General Government, even of the Supreme Court 
of the United States. 

It should be added that the ground of South 



k 



THE TWO CALHOUN S. 155 

Carolina's Nullification in 1832 was economical, her 
dislike of the tariff. But the ground of her Se- 
cession in 1860 was based openly on the support 
of Slavery. Disunion has thus in the intervening 
time allied itself to another principle, in order 
that both be destroyed together, chiefly through Lin- 
coln. In answer to the foregoing Resolutions, 
Daniel Webster entered the Senatorial arena 
against Calhoun with a speech, which, report de- 
clares, was consulted by Lincoln in the preparation 
of his first Inaugural. There is little doubt, then, 
than John Caldwell Calhoun was a prominent 
factor in Lincoln's early political training, chiefly 
by way of determent. Clay's Compromise Tariff 
of 1833 caused the South Carolina trouble to sub- 
side, but Lincoln never forgot the lesson. And on 
the other hand the South ;icvcr forgot Calhoun's 
teachings. Thus the two sides of the Civil War 
may be seen emerging dimly before the mind of 
Lincoln in 1833 and indeed before the Nation 
itself. 

Well may the reader imagine our Lincoln choos- 
ing his seat in some quiet nook and ''cocking up 
his legs higher than his head," after which prepara- 
toiy act he takes off his hat, more lucky for him 
than the wishing-cap of Fortunatus, and picks out 
of it the newspaper from some large city contain- 
ing in full the speeches of Calhoun and Webster 
upon the burning ciuestion of the hour. Uncon- 
sciously they open \x\) before him a sudden vista 



156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

of his own future, like a burst of sunlight through 
the intervening clouds. We may see him taking 
his side in the conflict and forming his first resolu- 
tion then, though much is still to evolve in him 
and in the Folk-Soul. But that wonderful Post 
Office Hat of his — we have found its place also in 
his Apprenticeship. Still there is no money in it, 
and none can be shaken out of it by the deftest 
magician — and Lincoln has reached the point at 
which he must have a little money. 

And now we pass to the second Calhoun who is 
also a politician and a great disputant upon his 
party's policies ; his field, however, is not the Sen- 
ate of the United States, but the streets and stores 
of Springfield, Illinois, with spouting excursions 
into Sangamon County, which, being strongly 
Democratic, has elected him its surveyor. He had 
heard of Lincoln, and for some reason, was 
prompted to appoint him, though a Whig, as his 
deputy. He sent a messenger to New Salem, who 
found Lincoln in the woods not far ofT splitting 
rails — in which he was a greater adept than in 
keeping store. He accepted the position, as there 
seemed to be some much-needed money in it, un- 
der condition of not sacrificing his political views 
or their expression. Also time was allowed him for 
learning the business, as he did not know survey- 
ing. 

Thus it befell in the year 1833 that a new public 
office dropped into Lincoln's lap (not into his hat 



THE TWO CALHOUNS. 157 

this time) quits unexpectedly, that of assistant to 
John Calhoun, the county surveyor, who had an 
excess of business at this juncture. Calhoun is de- 
clared to have been a Yankee and seems to have 
been no relative of the South Carolinian of the 
same name, who, as we have seen, was making a 
great stir in the nation this very year through the 
Nullification excitement. Our Illinois Calhoun 
had been bred to the law, but took to school- 
mastering in early Springfield, by preference it is 
said, in which vocation he showed a peculiar ex- 
cellence. He was an esteemed citizen, and held 
public offices of trust, having been not only sur- 
veyor of the county but also mayor of the town. 
Herndon gives a warm eulogy of him based on 
personal acquaintance, putting a high estimate 
both on his character and ability. He cites also 
Lincoln's view of the man: "I have heard Lincoln 
say that Calhoun gave him more trouble in his 
debates than Douglas ever did, because he was 
more captivating in his manner and a more learned 
man than Douglas." So far Herndon, who, how- 
ever, says nothing here of Calhoun's later Kansas 
career, which he must have known, but like a 
good lawyer, quietly passes over as not altogether 
favorable to his cHent's side. But this other side 
must not be wholly left out. 

Some twenty-five years later we find this same 
John Calhoun in Kansas as surveyor-general of the 
Territory, then in the deepest throes of its struggle 



158 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

with the slave-power. From surveying he passed 
into politics, and has come down to us not only 
as hostile to the freedom of Kansas but as the 
perpetrator of some of the worst partisan frauds 
on record. A Committee of the Legislature, get- 
ting on track of his fraudulent returns found them 
secreted in a candle-box under a wood-pile at Le- 
compton near Calhoun's office. It was shown that 
a forged list of 379 votes had been substituted for 
the original memorandum of only 43 votes, for the 
benefit of the pro-slavery candidates. From tliis 
incident the wrathful Kansans re-baptized him as 
John Candlebox Calhoun, under which name he 
seems destined to fill his little place in History. 
They caused his arrest, but he was liberated 
by pro-slavery Judge Cato on habeas corpus, after 
which he took a bee-line for Missouri and thence 
to Washington — not to Springfield, where his 
former assistant surveyor Lincoln was preparing 
to challenge Douglas and to take his first great 
stride toward the Presidency. 

Calhoun was also presiding officer of the fraud- 
ulent Convention which concocted the political 
imposture known as the Lecompton Constitution, 
which gave the people of Kansas so much trouble, 
and which he seems to have largely devised him- 
self apart from the Convention. Still the Lecomp- 
ton Constitution of Calhoun was supported and 
probably instigated by the Buchanan Administra- 
tion at Washington. Bad work is this for our 



THE TWO CALHOUNS. 159 

Yankee schoolmaster. Then it would seem that 
Calhoun tried to bribe the Kansas Governor, 
Walker, to the support of his Constitution by the 
offer of the Presidency of the United States, which 
he somehow held in the hollow of his hand. But 
note the fact that on the 2nd day of February, 
1858, President Buchanan transmits to Congress 
the Lecompton Constitution ''received from J. Cal- 
houn Esq. duly certified by himself," recommend- 
ing that Kansas be admitted as a Slave State 
under it. 

But be it said to his credit that he befriended 
Lincoln at a critical moment and enabled him to 
earn some money when it was sorely needed, after 
his total business collapse at New Salem. The 
kind act was surprising when we hear that a Dem- 
ocrat bestowed a political office upon an avowed 
Whig who insisted upon maintaining his freedom 
of opinion. Still more surprising does Calhoun's 
procedure seem when we learn that Lincoln had 
no preparation in surveying, and had to start 
studying it with Mentor Graham, the New Salem 
schoolmaster. Calhoun seems to have provided 
him with a text-book on surveying, Flint & Gib- 
son's, and to have waited for him to get ready. 
Tradition has it that in six weeks' time Lincoln 
had fairly mastered the subject, and reported for 
duty, having nearly killed himself meanwhile with 
studying. 

So two John C. Calhouns, John Caldwell and 



160 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

John Candlebox, one local, and the other national, 
get spun into Lincoln's life-thread about 1833. 
Each of them plays his peculiar part in bolstering 
a doomed political order, to which Lincoln mainly 
gives the final blow. Each in his separate sphere 
had a common attitude; each took his stand 
against the movement of the age. Each had his 
little tussle with the World-Spirit, and of course 
got thrown. In contrast to both Calhouns, Lin- 
coln was not only harmonious with his time's deep- 
est aspirations, but became its grand representa- 
tive and realizer, of course when the pivotal 
moment came long afterwards. 

Far better had it been for John Candlebox Cal- 
houn, had he remained a blameless and fameless 
pedagogue in Springfield, and won the admiration 
of grateful pupils like Herndon, who calls him "a 
typical gentleman — brave, intellectual, self-pos- 
sessed and cultivated. As an instructor he was 
the popular one of his day and age. I attended 
the school he taught when I was a boy .... 
Lincoln, I know respected and admired him." 
But ambition or adventure or what not led him in 
a fateful moment to Kansas where he has won a 
strange historic immortality, as if his were Ihe 
name of a very devil who sought to overthrow the 
freedom of Kansas through a fraud resembling 
that of the Father of Lies. The result is that 
to-day the average Kansan, having still the ten- 
dency to fight afresh the old battles along with 



i 



THE TWO CALHOUNS. 161 

John Brown's soul marching on, would stand 
ready at any minute to tackle the ghost of John 
Candlebox Calhoun, and with a volley of execra- 
tion to give it a blow, in memory at least, which 
would hurl it down to Dante's Inferno amid the 
spirits forever damned, landing it in the big Bulge 
or infernal Circle of sinners fraudulent. 

But the biographer, having duly noticed his 
Kansas career, will prefer to spend the last remi- 
niscence upon him as the benefactor of Lincoln at 
a very trying moment. For the poor youth, hav- 
ing failed in business, being overwhelmed with 
debt, and having no remunerative calling, and 
worried by duns and demands upon him from his 
poverty-stricken parents, obtains through Cal- 
houn, not then Candlebox, the best-paying subor- 
dinate position in Sangamon County probably, for 
he receives three tlollars a day, which was almost 
equal to the pay of the Governor of the State of 
Illinois, whose salary at this time was one thousand 
dollars a year. So too we can understand biog- 
rapher Herndon warmly interceding with History 
to spare his Springfield Calhoun and forgetting 
to say anything about the Kansas Candlebox 
Calhoun, though the latter of the two did by 
far the more famous deed, which rose for a little 
while into national importance, and made him a 
small speck or rather a blotch on the page of 

History. 

11 



162 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

X. 

The New Salem Solon. 

And now Lincoln, having done many Greek 
parts of a lesser heroic cast in our modern Homeric 
village, will grapple for and actually reach the 
highest — that of Lawgiver, re-enacting again in his 
way great men of old, to be sure without knowing 
it. Nor will he make laws now directly for the 
one small community or for the city-state of 
antique pattern, as did Solon, Lycurgus, Demonax 
and the other ancient Lawgivers ; the single com- 
munity is not now separate and autonomous, but 
conjoined into a larger political totality (the State) 
and this again into a still larger (the Federal 
Union) — an institutional order unknown to the old 
Hellenic world. Lincoln is chosen to sit in a body 
of lawmakers from every part of Illinois, and he is 
to legislate for the whole State and not merely for 
his little village; thus he begins to rise out of the 
Community into the Commonwealth, yea, out of 
the Commonwealth he is to expand into the 
Nation, starting from that small transitoiy dot 
called New Salem. Such an outlook we may trace 
in him, when he goes forth as legislator to Vanda- 
Ha, Capital of the State, really a great stride on 
his road to Washington, which road is the inner 
connecting line of his whole career. 

The pertinacity with which Lincoln seeks dur- 
ing his whole New Salem period to be a law-maker 



THE NEW SALEM SOLON. 163 

or member of the law-making body, is one of his 
salient traits. We have already seen how that in 
the earliest days of the earliest spring month, 
March, 1832, he announced himself as a candidate 
for the Illinois House of Representatives. His first 
glimpse of the town and people was gotten from 
his flat-boat lodged there on the dam in the pre- 
ceding April. Hardly six months had passed since 
he, returning from his flat-boat trip, had located 
in the village as Offut's clerk. Very rapid promo- 
tion was that, even for a popular youth. A con- 
siderable amount of self-confidence, yea, of self- 
esteem, shows itself in such a bold attempt, w^hich 
indeed reveals a settled strain of his character. 
His vocation, which was to deal with the Law, and 
with the State, was already lustily tlii'obbing 
within him and pushing him to action. 

He obtained his first impulse in this direction 
while a boy in Indiana, by hearing political 
speeches, which usually turned on some legal or 
constitutional question, by attending law-suits be- 
fore the squire as well as the judge, and chiefly by 
studying the Revised Laws of Indiana, with the 
appended documents — the Book of Institutions 
whose significance in the development of Lincoln 
has been already noted. Little opportunity in 
Illinois does he seem to have had as yet for realiz- 
ing his soul's aspiration, till in 1832 it suddenly 
burst forth in his candidacy. Naturally he was 
then beaten; but at the next opportunity, which 



164 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

has now come, he proposed to try again for the 
same prize. 

Accordingly, in the year 1834, the time for a 
new election of Legislators has arrived, and Lin- 
coln again offers himself as candidate. He is now 
better acquainted, his survey orship has brought 
him in contact with the People and made his char- 
acter known. Moreover, he is much better pre- 
pared; in his Blackstone he has conned the under- 
lying principles of Anglo-Saxon legislation, and 
studied the evolution of institutions. Now he 
seeks to take a practical step forward in order to 
realize his theoretical knowledge. He drives an 
active canvass, in which he makes speeches, tells 
stories, and even shows his physical superiority in 
wrestling, lifting weights and cradling grain. He 
was reaching out for the Folk-Soul everywhere and 
found it. He was elected this time by a handsome 
majority — ''by the highest vote cast for any can- 
didate," says one account which, however, is con- 
tested. But one thing is certain: we shall never 
hear again of anything in his legislative proposals 
like that double-acting, reversible law of usury, 
capable of being enforced or violated according to 
the necessities of justice, which law he had pro- 
posed in his Address two years before. Let us 
think that to some purpose he has been reading 
his Blackstone. 

It was during this canvass of 1834 tliat another 
pivotal opportunity came to him, that of studying 



THE NEW SALEM SOLON. 165 

law. The voice of the Goddess this time spoke 
through Major John T. Stuart, fellow-candidate 
now and once fellow-soldier in the Black Hawk 
War, also a Springfield lawyer in good practice. 
Lincoln, in autobiographic third person, speaks of 
liim thus: "During the canvass in a private con- 
versation he encouraged Abraham to study law. 
After the election he (Abraham) borrowed books of 
Stuart, took them home with him, and went at it 
in good earnest. He studied with nobody ; mixed 
in the surveying to pay board and clothing 
bills." In one sense Lincoln had been study- 
ing law a good while. The law-books alluded to 
in the foregoing account could not have included 
Blackstone, which he had already studied, but 
were the more professional works, as Chitty's 
Pleadings, Greenle&Vs Evidence and Storey's Equity, 
all of which he recommended later to a young man 
aspiring to become a lawyer. Lincoln had already 
mastered a book of legal forms so that he could 
draw up deeds, contracts, and various legal instru- 
ments, for which work he was soon in demand at 
New Salem as well as for practicing before the 
local squire. 

Outside of his duties as legislator and surveyor 
the study of the law must have been his chief occu- 
pation for the- two following years (1834-6). Says 
he of himself, "When the Legislature met, the law- 
books were dropped, but were taken up again at 
the end of the session." As surveyor he was far 



166 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

more successful than as a store-keeper, though he 
had to deal with the most sensitive and the most 
grasping part of the Anglo-Saxon character, 
namely its love or rather greed for land. When 
metes and bounds had to be re-adjusted and corners 
placed anew, (the early United States surveys were 
often very careless) the old farmer who lost a 
speck of soil would get fighting-mad, deeming the 
whole transaction an attempt to steal his land. 
Our Quaker Hercules could meet him in the tug of 
war, if need be; but Lincoln had a reconciling 
spirit, and everybody felt his justice. Through 
him such altercations ended in peace rather than a 
fight or an ugly stake-and-rider devil's fence, sign 
of bitter feud between adjoining land-owners. So 
great was his success in this ticklish business, and 
so general the belief in his fairness that the country 
districts of Sangamon County, though Democratic, 
rolled up a heavy vote in favor of the Whig can- 
didate for the Legislature from New Salem. 

Accordingly with a new suit of clothes, for buy- 
ing which he had to borrow the money, Lincoln 
sets out late in 183-4 for the Capitol at Vandaha, 
town of the Vandals, we may suppose by its name. 
He is not prominent as a member, he is learning, 
the Legislature is for him a school, a stage of his 
Apprenticeship. He becomes trained to parlia- 
mentary usage. He gets acquainted with the po- 
litical leaders from every part of the State. He 
sees the governmental machine working at its 



THE NEW SALEM SOLON. 167 

center with its threefold powers — legislative, exec- 
utive, judicial. Constitutional questions he hears 
discussed by able lawyers. In fine he beholds 
what he had hitherto only known theoretically, 
become the practical working fact before his eyes; 
what he once read in his Indiana book, of Statutes, 
he sees taking on the reality of government. 

At Vandalia for amusement he would have a 
story-telling bee of good fablers, in which he natur- 
ally took the chief part and which would increase 
his stock, as he is reported to have noted down all 
the best stories which he heard. Then Major 
Walker, the cat-gut virtuoso, would appear with 
his fiddle, and give the company a tune, a rural 
sample of his art not pitched too high for his 
listeners, which would set their feet to stamping 
time, and perchance to a shuffle round the floor. 
But amid all this boisterous sport one cannot help 
peeping into the depths of Lincoln's heart and 
glimpsing the agitation there at this date. Well 
might he whisper inwardly at the sweet sounds of 
his musical visitor a line of Shakespeare's lover 
voicing his own deepest emotion: ''If music be 
the food of love, play on!" For Lincoln had 
brought to Vandalia this year the deepest passion 
of his life, surging around a fair image which 
could never have been absent from his thoughts. 

And then behold! another figure appears at 
Vandalia during Lincoln's first session — never 
loved by him; his hfe's competitor and counter- 



168 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PARI FIRST. 

part, verily his antitype outside and inside, phys- 
ically and mentally. For the first time Stephen 
A. Douglas comes into Lincoln's horizon, never 
wholly to pass out of it till he passes beyond. 

XI. 

Lincoln and Douglas (I). 

The first blow in the long and at times desper- 
ate political battle between the Big and Little 
Giant, as the twain came to be called in Illinois, 
was struck by Lincoln as member of the Legisla- 
ture at Vandalia in 1835. He cast his vote against 
Douglas, who was seeking the office of State's at- 
torney of his judicial district, whom the Legisla- 
ture was empowered to elect. Douglas, then only 
twenty-two years old, who had but recently come 
into the State, and more recently still had been 
admitted to the bar, was seeking his first public 
office, and possessed already the valuable gift of 
blowing his own horn. For he, with hardly a 
year's experience of the law to his credit, was 
elected over his rival, John J. Hardin, a capable 
and experienced lawyer, and moreover, a popular 
man, who afterwards fell in the Mexican War. 
Of course politics had much to do with the elec- 
tion, as Hardin was a Whig and Douglas a Demo- 
crat appealing to a Democratic Legislature. Still 
the afTair shows the early skill of Douglas in politi- 
cal manipulation, for he had to meet in competi- 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS {1). 169 

tion old war-horses of his own party. The selec- 
tion, however, caused a good deal of unfavorable 
comment, especially among the Judiciary. An old 
judge (reported by Sheahan in his L//e 0/ Douglas), 
exclaimed indignantly: "What business has such 
a stripling with such an office? He is no lawyer 
and has no law-books." Still it is agreed that 
Douglas vindicated himself in his position, for 
surely he was not wanting in capacity for the 
task. 

So Douglas opens his public career against the 
vote of Lincoln, who saw him active in the lobby, 
which already constituted the third House (un- 
legal if not illegal), of America's dual legislative 
system. The question comes up: if that third 
House always is and has to be, why not legalize 
it? At any rate, Lincoln and Douglas have now 
sighted each other, possibly measured each other 
just a little. Anyhow, the report has come down 
that Lincoln declared Douglas to be ''the least 
man I have ever seen." Certainly the statement 
is ambiguous, and }3robably has such ambiguity 
as its point, hinting remotely a correspondence 
between the physical and mental stature of the 
small man, with an unconscious preference on part 
of the speaker of his own tallness, of which it is 
known that Lincoln was proud all his days. Anti- 
pathetic at first glance we must deem them not 
only in politics but in character, with a wholly 
different moral substructure for the edifice of life. 



170 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

Moreover, they already represent two opposite 
tendencies of their State, yea, of their time; these 
two tendencies, now just starting, will grow and 
widen till they bring the Nation into self-collision. 

Douglas was born in Vermont, and in early 
years worked at the trade of cabinet-maker; still 
he had the good Yankee primary schooling, and 
succeeded in obtaining a classical education. His 
life had been one of struggle, and he may be called 
a self-made man like Lincoln, though by no means 
to the degree or in the manner of Lincoln. Their 
striking polarity of character is seen in the fact 
that the born Southerner becomes the adversary 
of slavery, while the born Yankee becomes, if not 
the warm defender, at least the apologist of 
slavery. Douglas was four years younger than 
his rival and matured rapidly, far outstripping 
in his earlier career Lincoln, who was a slow 
grower but solid, and will overtake his fleet com- 
petitor in the final stretch for the goal which they 
both have in common. 

The two grand protagonists to whom so much 
of the future belongs, have now entered the public 
arena, eyeing each other for the first time — did 
they have any presentiment of the peculiar lot 
which was to link them together as opposites for a 
quarter of a century in a mutual relation ever re- 
p(']l(>nt, till that last scene on the steps of the Na- 
tional CajHtol? There is a remarkable evolution 
in this double movement of Lincoln and Douglas 



ANY RUT LEDGE. 171 

whose main stages we shall try to indicate as we 
proceed in our narrative. But Lincoln has now 
delivered his first blow against Douglas — not per- 
sonal indeed, but partisan — which blow, however, 
does not prevent the youthful contestant from 
carrying off the prize in the present case and often 
hereafter. 

Very little thought probably did Lincoln give to 
this matter or even to other weightier legislative 
matters at the present time; a far deeper, 
more intense problem, with which his heart was 
overflowing, awaited him at New Salem, whither 
he hastened as soon as the session closed, with 
hope and joy radiantly wreathing all his fancies 
during the whole journey, we must imagine, but 
at the same time with dark premonitions shooting 
up from the depths of his naturally foreboding 
soul cloud-wracks through the sunlit horizon of 
love. 

XII. 

Ann Rutledge. 

Said President-elect Lincoln to a New Salem 
friend, who was calling on him before his depar- 
ture for Washington, and who was led by the con- 
versation to ask him point-blank: "Lincoln, did 
you love Ann Rutledge?" 

"It is true, true, indeed I did. I have loved 
the name of Rutledge to this day .... I 



172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART FIRST. 

did honestly and truly love the girl, and think 
often, often, of her now." (Lamon). 

Thus emphatically, after the lapse of a full 
quarter of a century, does Lincoln express his 
ever-present memory of Ann Rutledge, who had 
the power of exciting in him an undying love, 
which colored his whole being and hence forms 
an important chapter in his life. Her early 
evanishment took a poetic form with him, and 
found utterance in some verses (not his own) which 
are usually entitled •"Immortality," but which put 
their whole stress upon the transitorincss of all 
things human, preluding the pensive strain with 

"Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud? 
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, 
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, 
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave." 

As late as March, 1864, he repeated at the 
White House with strong feeling the poem, which 
was for him a mournful reminder of Ann Rut- 
ledge, an ever-singing dirge of the soul over the 
vanished loved one, with the melancholy note of 
which his deepest emotions became concordant 
till the end of his days. Thus Lincoln reveals an 
immortal love, which will attune all the other 
throbbings of his heart, however profomid and 
intense. 

But now let us go back and pick up the young 
man as he returns from his legislative career at 
Vandalia, with a consciousness of having taken his 



ANN RUTLEDGE. 173 

fii*st considerable step in public life. He has won 
a position which is an earnest of something 
greater. A regard for himself he can now have 
as never before ; he can deem himself right worthy 
of somewhat, be it what it may. 

There is no doubt also that he brought back 
another emotion hitherto hidden in his heart — love. 
He had long secretly felt the tender passion for a 
young lady we have already titled the fairest 
flowTr in the village. Hitherto her betrothal to 
another who seemed to have deserted her, and 
Lincoln's own lack of equal position and pos- 
sibly of self-estimation, had deterred him from 
pressing his suit. But all the obstacles seemed to 
get themselves slowly out of the way, and some 
time in the spring of 1835, while the birds were 
singing and the flowers were springing on the 
banks of the full-flowing Sangamon, these two 
young hearts, long beating with and for each 
other, were joined together in the sacred promise 
of eternal fidelity. 

Ann Rutledge was the daughter of the first cit- 
izen of the New Salem and one of its fountlers. 
James Rutledge, her father, was born in South 
Carolina, where his family had been distinguished 
in the early history of the country, especially dur- 
ing and just after the Revolution. The name of 
one ancestor, Edward Rutledge, is affixed to the Dec- 
laration of Independence; another was one of the 
first judges of the Supreme Court of the United 



174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

States. A great historic name was brought into 
the small town on the Sangamon, and it can be 
well understood that the family in the Far West 
did not neglect their genealogy. A certain pride 
as well as traditional feeling of superiority inbred 
in the Southerner, was not wanting even in the 
log-cabin tavern of New Salem, with its four 
rooms, numerous children, besides the guests. 

James Rutledgc had migrated from his native 
State northward to Kentucky, where he stayed 
many years, and where his daughter Ann was 
born January 7th, 1813. For such has been the 
interest in Lincoln's love-idyl that the exact date 
has been dug up by the eager explorer. But the 
father was not satisfied with Kentucky, and so 
he crossed the Ohio River into Illinois and reached 
the site of New Salem in 1829. He was a man of 
hospitality, yet with an eye to business, keeping a 
store and a mill in the village — two important 
centers of its life. Somewhat strangely we read 
that he kept the town tavern, not the natural oc- 
cupation for a hospitable man. It is not known 
why he quit South Carolina and then Kentucky, 
and never stopped in his migration till he reached 
the central belt of a Free State. But his migra- 
tory act was typical of what was taking place in 
the 20's, 30's and 40's, indicating a movement 
from the old Slave States to the new Slave States, 
and thence to the new Free States of the North- 
West. It is substantially the line of Lincoln's 



ANN RUT LEDGE. 175 

own ancestral migration, as already given (p. 27, 
35). The main ground of these migrations was 
some questioning of the servile institution, and 
followed strongly the slavery agitation connected 
with the Missouri Compromise and the development 
of the cotton culture. It grew plain that the 
South would not throw off slavery through her 
own initiative; the line between Free States and 
Slave States became fixed, as Mason and Dixon's, 
though previously fluctuating. James Rutledge 
belonged to this great migration from the South 
to the North, whatever may have been his political 
sentiments. We may note, however, that in 
the Revolutionary period John Rutledge was a 
strong opponent of slavery (seeMcCrady's excellent 
History of South Carolina for this period). 

Much evidence has been gathered that Ann 
Rutledge was the favorite belle of New Salem. 
Herndon, who knew her, declares that she was 
"a beautiful girl, and by. her winning ways 
attached people to her so firmly that she soon be- 
came the most popular young lady of the Village." 
Another observer affirms that her intellect was 
"philosophic" as well as "brilliant." For the favor 
of the young lady there was considerable rivalry 
among the young gallants of New Salem, when 
finally the prize was won by a suitor who went 
under the name of McNeil, seemingly about 1830 
or 1831. This was not far from the time when 
Lincoln came driftinai; down the Sangamon into 



176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

New Salem (in 1831), being remembered by the 
people, and probably by Ann, too, for his exploit 
in bringing the flat-boat over her father's mill- 
dam. 

Just when the undercurrent of love began to be 
powerful in Lincoln's heart, cannot be told. He 
and Ann must have been often thrown together in 
that small spot. Lincoln boarded at her father's 
tavern in 1832, and then he saw much of her in 
her domestic life, thus becoming well acquainted 
with her character. Also, she went to school to 
Mentor Graham, the center of light in the town, 
with whom Lincoln had much to do, as we have 
already seen. In the Rutledge family there were 
probably traditions of classic culture. We hear 
that Ann and her brother went away to an 
academy in Jacksonville, for studying some 
branches out of the range of the village school- 
master. James Rutledge, the father, seems to 
have organized a Literary Club at New Salem, of 
which he was President, and before which Lin- 
coln made a speech that pleased Papa Rutledge 
much, for he talked about it at home to his 
wife, probably in Ann's presence (Lamon), 

But is it still possible to reach down to the 
common bond which kept bringing together young 
Lincoln and Ann Rutledge? The two had selected 
each other, overcoming inner opposition in spite 
of obstacles. Their love blossometl in their com- 
mon aspiration for a higher culture. They 



ANN RUT LEDGE. 177 

alone of that whole community longed to rise 
above the low intellectual plane of the average 
New Salemite. We have to think that Ann's love 
for McNeil (or McNamar) was not destroyed, but 
divided — being shared unconsciously perhaps at 
first by another. And here lies her heart's con- 
flict, which ends in her tragedy — the conflict of 
two loves coupled with two ever-clashing duties. 
McNeil had shown himself an excellent business 
man, having in three years gained a half interest 
in the store where he began as a clerk, and hav- 
ing purchased a fine farm besides. Therein he far 
outstripped Lincoln. Being from the East, he 'had 
a good elementary education, which Lincoln had 
not. But he seems to have been prosaic, all for 
business, esteeming the West for what he could 
make out of it by way of hard cash. 

Then there was the class obstacle, so strongly 
emphasized in Southern society. Lincoln belonged 
to the poor whites, to the second families; Ann 
was of aristocratic lineage — decidedly of the First 
FamiHes. He did not fail to hear of the great 
Rutledges in that log-cabin of a tavern ; the De- 
claration of Independence he had alrcad}^ conned 
with its names as a boy at Gentryville, in the 
Indiana Book of Institutions. The genealogical 
tree was that part of botany chiefly cultivated 
in the old States, South and North. In the West 
it was inclined to wither after the first genera- 
tion, to which the elder Rutledge still belonged. 

12 



178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

Ann, his young daughter, probably had her waver- 
ings on this point also. 

And now the other side of the story enters — 
the prolonged and unexplained absence of her 
betrothed. McNeil's name was really McNamar; 
he had changed it for reasons which, as given 
by him, seem rather whimsical. This fact he 
had confided to his lady-love, who afterwards 
told the secret and thereby caused much gossip 
and conjecture in the village. McNeil, in the 
spring of 1834, resolved to go East, saying he 
wished to see his parents, and bring them to the 
West. Then occurred the absence, interrupted 
by letters to Ann at long intervals. His" conduct 
became the talk of the town, whose favorite lit- 
tle heroine was involved. Some of the views were 
bitter, he was branded as an adventurer,* jail-bird, 
deceiver. But many who did not share this 
harsh opinion, regarded it as a case of cooled love. 
Ann herself thought so, and evidently Lincoln 
also, only too glad to slip into the vacant shoes. 
We must not forget that the engagement had 
already lasted three years, if not longer. In the 
meantime the ungainly youth had been rising 
till he was the man of the future in the place, 
and everybody could see it and ratified it by their 
votes. 

Now it was at this opportune time when Lin- 
coln stei)[)ed in and began to press his suit, 
McNeil had been absent a year in the spring of 



I 



ANN RUTLEDGE. 179 

1835. Lincoln had come home from his legisla- 
tive career, and was the rising star. The engage- 
ment followed; but marriage was again deferred 
till Lincoln could complete his legal training, and 
Ann could take a course of study at the Jack- 
sonville Academy. Two spiritually kindred souls 
we behold, united in the aspiration for higher de- 
velopment. Here we have the intellectual bond, 
twinned with the emotional one, which at last 
brought the two together and bound them in- 
dissolubly, and which had long been secretly pull- 
ing their heart-strings. And it was this new 
preference which slowly for years had been loosen- 
ing the one knot and tieing the other, till at 
last the sacred pledge has joined the twain. 

But such was the nature of Ann Rutledge that 
she could not make the transition from one love 
to the other; both nestled in her heart and tore 
it asunder like two wild beasts. The re-action 
came with an overwhelming intensity; conscience 
would upbraid her, fidelity scorned her, while she 
was dashed to and fro in resurgences to her old 
love and to her new. She fell sick, grew worse, 
Lincoln was sent for and stayed an hour at the 
side of the dying bride, who soon after passed 
away, August 25th, 1835. She was buried in the 
old Concord graveyard near New Salem, which 
afterward fell into neglect; but in 1890 her re- 
mains were transferred to the new Oakland cem- 
etery, where a stone marked simply Ann Rut- 



180 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

ledge peers above the greensward. Thither tender 
souls have begun to make pilgrimages as they go 
to Verona for the sake of seeing the house of 
Romeo and Juliet. 

The effect of the blow upon Lincoln brought 
him into a state verging toward insanity. He was 
sent by his friends to a secluded home in the 
country, where he was sympathetically cared for 
by Mr. Bowling Greene and wife, who succeeded in 
bringing him back to a fair condition of mental 
health. It is stated that when Greene died in 
1842, Lincoln was selected to deliver a funeral 
oration, but could not come to utterance owing to 
his emotion rising from past memories. This was 
seven years later, and the year of Lincoln's mar- 
riage with Miss Todd. He said to a friend that 
the thought that "the snows and rains fall upon 
her grave fills him with indescribable grief." 
And the memory of her went with him seemingly 
to the end; long afterwards we have already heard 
him say: 'T think often, often of her now." 

So we have the part of Lincoln as lover with tragic 
intensity. Evidently that love had been of long, 
persistent, ever-increasing growth, even if secreted 
till the golden opportunity bloomed. But its 
crushing miglit brings with it a corresponding 
discipline. He has gradually to get control of 
that volcanic emotional nature of his, whi(;h 
surges through him as if it would undermine his 
reason. Lincoln endures the awful strain and 



ANN RUTLEDGE. 181 

comes forth a purified soul from the Discipline of 
Love, but he carries the mark with him all his life, 
a tendency to reminiscent sorrow over his loss. 
What did it do for him? At least compelled him 
to the inner mastery of Fate. The deepest sep- 
aration of life is experienced, immortality is 
awakened in him — the thought of futurity and the 
return of the beloved In another existence. 

Still that poem round which his deepest emo- 
tions so persistently clung, celebrates mortality 
rather than immortality, the evanescent rather 
than the eternal in man, who in \'iew of his utterly 
fleeting appearance here on earth should not exalt 
himself. This is the last verse: 

" 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, 
From the blossom of health to the palenss of death, 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud; 
Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" 

And yet amid all these transitory outer shows 
of mortality, there is one thing that persists and 
is immortal — love. That is the secret contrast 
which lies in these verses for Lincoln, recalling and 
gratifying through their utterance the deepest and 
most lasting emotion of his life. Something of the 
same strain breathes in that strangely premonitory 
hymn which Lincoln asked Ann to sing for 
him during her illness, while she still could sing: 

"Vain man, thy fond pursuits forbear!" 

This sounds not very encouraging to her lover 
on the outside, but it must have touched that 



182 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

deepest layer of emotion in his nature which felt 
in the fair vanishing shape before him the tie 
which is eternal. This hymn was one "for which 
Lincoln always expressed a great preference, and 
it was likewise the last thing she ever sung " (note 
in Herndon I., p. 129, last edition). 

But what about the other lover, McNamar? He 
came to New Salem with his Eastern family of rel- 
atives, two months after the death of Ann Rut- 
ledge. As far as known, he showed no signs of 
deep sorrow; within a year he took a wife. It has 
been handed down that he met at the post-office 
sorrowing Lincoln, and made the remark that the 
latter ''seemed desolate and sorely distressed" — 
which was apparently not his own case. There is 
no mystery in his conduct, as some have thought; 
his love had waned, and there is every reason to 
believe that he would not have married Ann Rut- 
ledge if she had lived. 

Lincoln seems never to have cared for the young 
women in his early environment. ■ His step-sister 
was of marriageable age, lived with him, and the 
mother was probably willing, yet the Love-God 
did not turn that way, though a young fellow of 
the early twenties has a natural bent toward the 
tender passion. Pubescent years seem to have 
run without the cast of a single arrow. Ann Rut- 
ledge appears to have been his fir:^t and probably 
his last love. The later Mrs. Lincoln must have 
known somewhat of the matter, and this may 



ANN RUTLEDGE. 183 

be taken as a partial justification of certain phases 
of her behavior. Some expression from Lincohi's 
own lips, rumor of the old affair, the gossipy 
tongue of a neighbor, stirred a temper naturally 
irritable. Lincoln at New Salem often went to 
Ann Rutledge's resting-place and wept. He once 
said ''My heart is buried there," and there it seems 
to have stayed. 

Certain writers on Lincoln have maintained that 
it was the death of Ann Rutledge which wove the 
dark thread of melancholy through his soul. 
Hardly ; that thread was spun l^y Clotho herself at 
his birth from his mother's own temperament. 
Then this hereditary trait was nursed by the nar- 
row, cribbed, imprisoning environment of his 
youth, for Lincoln was born an aspiring, limit- 
transcending genius, if there ever was one ; but like 
Ariel, he was pegged 

"Into a cloven pine ; within which rift 
Imprisoned, thou didst painfully remain 
A dozen years ; where thou didst vent thy groans 
As fast as mill-wheels strike." 

So too Lincoln in his way; still he had found his 
relief, not through a magician Prospcro but 
through himself, strangely mocking his own Ariel's 
groans by his humor and grotesquery, which never 
deserted him afterwards. Still when this tragedy 
of Love overtook him, there had to be a new and 
deeper adjustment of the sjiirit to meet the lower- 
ing Fates of existence. That profound and ever- 



184 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST 

bubbling reservoir of emotion, one of his supreme 
endowments, burst up into a boiling maelstrom of 
sorrow, which for a time swirled around within 
itself and became madness, threatening to con- 
tinue such for life in its wild agitation. But he won 
the power within himself of turning the sharp 
corner back to hope and sanity, and thus became 
the Fate-compeller over the most fateful element 
of his own nature — his emotions, certainly the 
most dangerous part of the human fabric if not 
duly ordered and controlled. In the very hardest 
test Lincoln gained the mastery and kept it, not 
without mighty resurgences from that inner reser- 
voir which once overflowed for a brief period his 
reason. 

The deepest turn of his life he revealed to the 
New Salem friend already cited, the one who paid 
him a visit twenty-five years afterward and pro- 
pounded to him heart-searching interrogations, one 
of which has been already noted. Here follows 
another with his answer: 

"Abe, it is true that you ran a little wild about 
the matter?" 

"I did really. I ran off the track. I loved the 
girl clearly. She was a handsome girl; would have 
made a good, loving wife." 

And still, though he "ran off the track" in his 
desperate collision with Fate, he got on again, and 
mastered the antagonist. For here he is, Presi- 
dent-elect of the United States, and rather the 



ANN RUT LEDGE, 185 

sanest man of his time, perchance just thi'ough 
that mastery and its soul-trying discipHne. This 
now advances to its supreme gift, imparting not 
merely a stoical, negative suppression of emotion, 
but a new positive transfigured endowment of 
spirit. 

The individual Ann Rutledge is gone, indeed, 
forever, but the love remains and will not depart. 
What is to be done with it? Eradicated it cannot 
be, unless by tearing out the heart itself by the 
roots. But it can be transformed, or rather trans- 
figured, and thus in a manner be preserved ever 
active and beneficent. From the individual it 
can be elevated into universality, and thereby not 
only save the man but give him a new birth, a 
spiritual palingenesis. The problem with Abra- 
ham Lincoln now is : Can I transfigure the love 
of this individual Ann Rutledge, forever vanished 
as individual, into an universal love for humanity, 
ever-present and undying? Can I rise even 
through emotion from the one to the all? Verily 
he can and does ; indeed the terrible ordeal has 
just this providential purpose: he must come to 
feel and perchance to see that the painful Disci- 
pline of Love is not to destroy it but to eternize it 
by transfiguring it into the personality, and thus 
making it the inner luminary which shines tlii'ough 
character and deeds. 

Here we behold, if not the original germ, at 
least the grand flowering of that deepest and all- 



186 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

pervasive trait of Lincoln, ^vhich we may exalt as 
his universal love. Though called to administer 
a national discipline, as severe as his own personal 
discipline ever was, he did it not in hate and re- 
venge, as everybody now recognizes. In his last 
Inaugural, toward the close of a bloody and furi- 
ous Civil War only a few weeks before his own 
evanishment, he reaches the highest and purest 
note of this most perfect strain of his character. 
Let us read it again, for it stands alone among all 
State papers, and is unique in Literature: "With 
maUce toward none, with charity for all; with 
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the 
right, let us strive to finish the work we are in ; to 
bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who 
shall have borne the battle and for his widow and 
his orphan — to do all which may achieve and 
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves 
and with all nations." 

Such is the note of universal Love in this 
noblest verse of our American Bible, uttered amid 
the clash of arms to the Folk-Soul which has given 
to it a mighty, a universal response as expressive 
of its highest self — a response which keeps rolling 
louder and more harmonious as it echoes down 
Time. The fact is observable that this trait of 
Lincoln, his universal Love, has become at pres- 
ent the chief theme of anecdote, reminiscence, 
story, novel, and other literary utterance pertain- 
ing to him, directly or remotely. His kindness. 



MARY OWEXS. 187 

forgiveness, tender-heartedness — his "charity for 
air'^with instances repeating themselves thou- 
sandfold, seems to be selected as the typical qual- 
ity of his soul, always being brought up to the 
light, and celebrated anew in quite every form of 
human expression. 

And indeed that theme — love of the individual 
transfigured and made universal — has always been 
a favorite with the greatest masters in Literature. 
We can find it in Shakespeare, who thus endows 
particularly a number of his female characters; 
we can find it in Goethe, and above all, in Dante, 
who transfigures his love of Beatrice after her 
death, so that she becomes a symbol of Divine Love 
itself, which draws him upward to the celestial 
city. The medieval Italian poet is very different 
from the modern American statesman ; still it may 
be said that Ann Rutledge was Lincoln's Beatrice. 
Both men married after their fier}^ Discipline of 
Love through death, and had children; but that 
fi^'st Love was the eternal one, and conducted 
them both into the universal life of the heart, 
whose inspiration in Lincoln's case we may catch 
at its ever-living source in his simple confession : 
"I think often, often of her now." 

XIIL 

Mary Cwens. 
What! another woman in line, and that, too, 
so soon! Yes, now we have to give a leap, earth- 



188 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST 

defying, to the other side of our universal Lin- 
coln — a leap impossible to many and straining in 
every joint the few who can make it. The be- 
holder of Lincoln's life-drama is whisked with 
dizzying celerity from his Tragedy of Love to its 
grotesque antithesis, to his Comedy of Love. Yet, 
just that is our lot in trying not only to see but 
to be Lincoln vicariously in this biographic jour- 
ney. 

Accordingly beside the foregoing tragic phase 
of Lincoln's life, we must place the comic coun- 
terpart, which followed not long after. It may 
be said that the two occurrences so conjoined pro- 
duce a shocking dissonance in the reader. But 
the reader must learn to know Lincoln with all 
his jars, jolts and contradictions, not a few of 
which will be found among the deepest and sub- 
tlest, not only of his but of human nature. 

Already it has been said that there is a per- 
vasive grotesque element in Lincoln, which we 
have not only to acknowledge but to fathom. 
Physically there was something of the grotesque 
in him, and mentally even more. From now on 
he seems to have relieved the burden of his spirit 
in the caricature of his own ills. Very deep and 
strong ran the current of his emotional nature, 
and will tear him to shreds, unless he can meet 
its ravages by some counteractive power. That 
inner gnawing gloom can he somehow turn back 
upon itself and make it gnaw itself to death 



MARY OWENS. 189 

instead of him? Destroyer it is indeed; can it 
not be whirled about and be forced to destroy 
itself? Lincoln's mastery of the tragedy of fini- 
tude is now slowly won: he makes it finite to 
itself and thus ends it. His own inner Furies of 
Feeling would have eaten him up, unless he could 
have turned them upon one another. Thus they 
showed themselves as self-undoing, absurd, comic. 
Enormous strength of the spirit this indeed re- 
quired—here is probably his greatest strength. At 
Fortune he not only made mouths, but made her 
make mouths at herself. Even Love, getting 
vengeful and demonic, is forced by him to play 
the part of a clown instead of an all-powerful 
deity. This is not merely light-hearted indiffer- 
ence which feels little and cares less, not steeled 
stoicism which lets Fate strike on in pure defi- 
ance. Rather is Fate made to undo itself in its 
own blow; its own stroke is deftly changed to the 
counterstroke upon its own head. Fate itself be- 
comes fated in Lincoln's humor and is laughed out 
of the world for the time being. All finitude Lincoln 
turned to a grotesque and made it show its limits, 
even its lie; he, being finite, became grotesque 
along with finitude, and thus transcended it, re- 
vealing his universal nature. Even suffering is a 
destroying fiend, a negative power; why should it 
not somehow be served up to itself, if not directly, 
then indirectly by the mind? 

Dante's Inferno is, of all human portrayals, the 



190 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

fullest of suffering and of grotesquely, strange and 
horrible as the combination may seem. Sin is 
shown as self-undoing, and so at bottom grotesque, 
even through the fires of Hell. And Homer, the 
great type of classicism, cannot help making his 
Zeus grotesque, especially when the divine mood 
is negative and minatory. And that battle of 
Gods, of all-powerful Gods fighting each other, is 
a grotesque, and certainly Homeric for that reason, 
in spite of the head-shaking critics. And in Shakes- 
peare comedy is always trailing upon the heels 
of tragedy; mark the fool in Lear, the grave-dig- 
ger in Hamlet, the drunken porter in Macbeth. So 
we shall find Lincoln ; after the heart-rending, tragic 
pathos of Ann Rutledge follows the comedy of 
Mary Owens. The latter indeed seems to have 
felt the true situation, with her woman's in- 
stinct; so she responded to her suitor with a 
smart backstroke of his own humor. 

Mary Owens was born in Kentucky, September 
29th, 1808, and so was a little older than Lin- 
coln. She was well educated, of polished man- 
ners, of a wealthy anil high-toned family. It is 
noteworthy that all three of Lincoln's sweethearts 
including his wife, were aristocratic Kentucky 
girls, then as now famous for their beauty, ca- 
prices, and accomplishments. Mary Owens visited 
her married sister, who lived near New Salem, 
first in 1833, when she met Lincoln without any 
pronouncetl result on cither side. She returned 



MARY OWENS. 191 

ill 183G, when Lincoln was the great man of the 
village. Then began the serio-comic interlude 
in which she furnished the coquetry and Lin- 
coln the grotesquely. 

We may take as the overture to this merry 
war a passage from Lincoln's letter describing the 
event after it was over. Merry war we name it, 
for it can hardly be called serious, though both 
parties get their fingers burnt a little — not much — • 
by playing with fire. But to the letter: "A mar- 
ried lady of my acquaintance and who was a great 
friend of mine, being about to pay a visit to her 
father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, 
proposed to me that on her return she would 
bring a sister of hers with her, on condition that 
I would engage to become her brother-in-law 
with all convenient dispatch. I of course accepted 
the proposal, for you know I could not have done 
otherwise had I really been averse to it." He 
adds, however, that "I was most confoundedly 
well pleased with the project." 

Here is the start in banter, Lincoln being 
"not averse" to the trial. A brief glance of the 
woman as natural match-maker does not fail to 
peep out in this "great friend of mine," and this 
same woman knew well what an emotional earth- 
quake Lincoln had just passed through. Moreover 
he had seen "the said sister some three years be- 
fore," with interest, apparently, but without feel- 
ing any bolt from the Love-God. Now think 



192 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

what Lincoln had experienced in those three 
years! He had risen to be the first man of the 
village with the flattering possibihty of a future 
career. But what is far more pertinent to the 
present situation, he had on life's stage enacted 
the most passionate tragedy of love. How could 
he have the heart to suppress all that in a year! 
A.h, that is Lincoln again. The comic side of Love 
he has to play as a relief from its destroying tragic 
intensity. 

It is evident that Lincoln felt fascinated by 
Miss Owens when seen, but when she was out of 
sight he reacted strongly. In her presence she 
might make him forget, or see in her the other; 
but when he was left to himself the other as image 
came back overpoweringly. In this mood we 
have two letters from him to his "Dear Mary." 
The first is certainly not encouraging. ''I am 
afraid you would not be satisfied" with my pov- 
erty at Springfield. ''My opinion is you had 
better not do it," namely, accept my proposal 
offered you personally. Certainly that is no love- 
letter with its rainbow of hopes; "You have not 
been accustomed to hardships," which you are 
certain to have in living with me. What other 
conclusion speaks out of these words but this: 
Therefore reject me. A second letter after a visit 
is even more dissuasive. The first sentence runs: 
"You will no doubt think it rather strange that I 
should write you a letter on the same day on which 



MARY OWENS. 193 

we parted." It is strange and the reason is that "at 
our last meeting wc had but few expressions of 
thoughts." In her presence he could not come to 
utterance, but he must now express "what my real 
feelings toward you are." He tells her that she 
can, if she so wishes, "leave this letter unanswered 
without accusing murmur from me." And he 
goes so far as to say that "it is my sincere wish 
that you should," if it will add "anything to your 
peace of mind." And in the last paragraph of 
the same letter he repeats: "If it suits you best 
not to answer this — farewell." In reply he gets 
just what he wants — No. The relief was instan-. 
taneous and great, for it gave origin to a wild, 
whimsical effervescence of grotesquely, which is 
reflected in a letter to another lady about the oc- 
currence. 

This letter is known in Lincoln literature as the 
Browning letter (it was addressed to an intimate 
lady-friend, Mrs. 0. H. Browning), and has been 
an irremovable stumbling-block in the way of 
some of Lincoln's admirers. Biographer Lamon 
wished to withhold it if "the act could be decently 
reconciled to the conscience of a biographer." He 
was shocked by "its grotesque humor," and others 
have echoed his plaints. Lincoln was a good, yea 
a famous speller, but it seems that he set off the 
general tomfoolery of this letter by a "defective 
orthography," There is no doubt that he gives 
himself up to a fit of broad caricature as he looks 

13 



194 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

back at the whole affair. It was not the genuine 
article at all, and well does he know the fact. It 
was a false, delusive phantom of love on the part 
of both, and hence ridiculous, self-annulhng, comic. 
A little comedy of love one may deem the action, 
at whose conclusion nobody perishes, or even gets 
seriously hurt, though Lincoln confesses that "I 
very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost 
beyond endurance !" Still he had sought all along 
"how I might procrastinate the evil day." But 
when that "evil day" did come, it brought an 
answer just the opposite of what he expected. 
Long afterwards Miss Owens gave a superb sum- 
mary of the situation: ''I thought Mr. Lincoln 
deficient in those little links which make up the 
chain of woman's happiness." Such a listless, 
insipid lover was just no lover at all, and so she 
gives him back his own when they reach the 
parting of the ways. 

Lincoln does not spare himself in the same let- 
ter: "I most emphatically in this instance made 
a fool of myself." He thinks of never marrying, 
because ''I can never be satisfied with anyone 
who would, be blockhead enough to have me." 
In his portraiture of Miss Owens, he distorts her 
features to caricature, making her "a fair match 
for Falstaff," fat, toothless, weather-beaten, aged 
(she was a few months older than Lincoln, and 
certainly was more beautiful). Of course these 
expressions were used in a private letter, which 



THE PASSING OF NEW SALEM. 195 

he took as a vehicle for blowing off his native 
grotesquery. This was an inherent part of the 
total man, the reverse side of him and also of his 
world. 

Thus in the drama of life Lincoln has played 
the two parts of Love, the tragic and the comic, 
or the serious and the humorous — parts opposite, 
indeed, yet forming one totality of personal ex- 
perience, as well as of the amatory theme itself. 
Therewith his many-colored career at New Salem 
draws to a close in a shocking outburst of gro- 
tesquery, but deeply concordant with, and explana- 
tory of his whole nature. And our variegated vil- 
lage of New Salem, itself a grotesque, begins also 
to wind up its brief panorama of existence, hav- 
ing furnished an harmonious setting for the most 
unique and diversified stage in the Apprenticeship 
of Abraham Lincoln. 

XIV. 

The Passing of New Salem. 

Very closely identified were the young village 
and the young man, the communal and the per- 
sonal characters. New Salem and Lincoln. Verily 
they grew in strong correspondence ; they were for 
a period symmetrical counterparts, with lives 
deeply intertwined. Man unfolds in and with his 
community, his institution; and the community 
pivots upon its great individual, often rising and 
faUing with him in the stages of his career. Lin- 



196 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

coin spiritually moves out of New Salem, and what 
has it to do but to die, its soul having departed 
and its function being accomplished? That de- 
clining village, in co-operation with his own short- 
comings, had brought him failure, had in fact 
thrown him back for a time to his beginning as 
rail-splitter. When notice comes to him that he 
can be appointed assistant surveyor of Sangamon 
County, the bearer of the message finds him no 
longer in New Salem, but in the woods working 
at his old employment of making rails. Thus he 
has been whisked back quite to his Illinois start- 
ing-point. But of a sudden and very unexpect- 
edly the messenger of the Gods (we may again 
say) having taken the form of a well-known neigh- 
bor, Pollard Simmons by name, appears to him 
beside a prostrate oal^, and catches his arm in the 
very act of uplifting a huge maul, and exclaims: 
Stop, Lincoln, the Gods have other work for 
thee. Then the messenger announces their de- 
cree, and Lincoln obeys, recognizing the divine 
call which has dropped down upon liim so sud- 
denly, at his lowest depression there in the woods. 
His activity is no longer to be confined to a petty 
village but is to extend over the whole county of 
Sangamon, with whose people he is henceforth to 
come into contact. His surveyorship is the tran- 
sition out of New Salem to a larger field ; the some- 
what narrow communal life is to be transcended, 
and Lincoln will become acquainted with a new 



THE PASSING OF NEW SALEM. 197 

and wider range of the Folk-Soul, which it is his 
destiny at last to know and to represent in its en- 
tirety. Thus through the kind and opportune help 
of John Calhoun, surveyor of Sangamon County, 
Lincoln is brought to take an important step toward 
the goal of his career, breaking out of his New 
Salem environment, and rescued from sinking back 
into his earlier pinched existence on a farm. 

But what about New Salem itself? It slowly 
drifts towards its fate in extinction. As a piece 
of driftwood, it has no staying power, never had; 
in deepest accorcl with its drifting, insubstantial 
character, it must pass and cease to be. Negative 
we have called it, so what has it to do but to van- 
ish? Strangely it drifts with the stream and is 
transformed into another and different community. 
The town of Petersburg, which- is soon to be laid 
out, is two miles down the Sangamon from New 
Salem, which now seems to float off from its hil- 
lock, navigating for a little distance the turbid 
current which Has otherwise shown itself not very 
navigable. We may see the village giving up its 
very anchor of hope, which was the navigability 
of the Sangamon, and flinging itself down from its 
perch into the roaring waters of its loved river- 
nymph, who has proved so faithless to her early 
promise. Disappearing in the waves for a while, 
it crawls out on the bank, but metamorphosed into 
the town of Petersburg. 

It was in the year 183G that Lincoln, in his ca- 



198 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

pacity of surveyor, was called upon to plan, to lay 
out in lots and streets, in fine, to bring into vis- 
ible existence the successor of his own New Salem. 
He had already resolved to leave the latter, hav- 
ing nearly finished his law-course, and intending 
to make Springfield his home. One can have lit- 
tle doubt that he felt the coming evanishment of 
the village. There was always in it something of 
the uncertain, transitory, or drifting, as we have 
so often termed it. Our interest in it springs from 
the fact that Lincoln during these years had the 
same general trait. And now his call is to put an 
end to his own and the village's time of drifting. 
After some weeks of labor the new town of Peters- 
burg is born through the surveyor's skill, is baptized 
with a name, and starts off in the world, still to- 
day regarding Lincoln affectionately as its god- 
father. 

There was enough in the situation to give rise 
to sombre reflections in the mind of Lincoln prone 
to melancholy. Of course none of these reflections 
have come down, very few of them were probably 
ever spoken, still he must have been aware, even if 
dimly, that he was leaving behind himself one 
stage of his Apprenticeship, and entering upon 
another. New Salem he felt to be a part of him- 
self — a part which is now to disappear forever. 
Could he help thinking of Ann Rutledgc whom the 
same lot of earthly evanishment had befallen, 
foreshadowing in a kind of liuman symbol the fate 



\ 



THE PASSIXG OF NEW SALEM. 199 

of the village, and perchance more remotely of 
himself? New Salem was gradually deserted, be- 
coming a communual graveyard from which even, 
the houses have now vanished. 

Petersburg, the new town, continues, and will 
continue to exist ; still it has not, nor is it likely to 
have the fame of that dead village. New Salem, 
which bloomed so suddenly but lived hardly a de- 
cade. Its brief life, however, is immortally inter- 
twined with Lincoln; it seemed to arise and to 
exist in order to give him a certain necessary 
part of his training for his work. Then its ground 
for living departed, and it drifted down stream out 
of sight, having furnished in its own career a small 
sympathetic world for unfolding an important 
stage of Lincoln's career. 

To our mind there is a poetic strand in the rise, 
bloom and decline of New Salem; in fact, the 
whole village passes before us as a kind of poem 
in action, of which Lincoln is the hero, who fills 
all its leading parts with a certain heroic suprem- 
acy. Small, verily, is the field, so small that 
the deeds often take a mock-heroic tinge ; still they 
are real and call forth the latent gifts of their 
youthful doer. We have often named it an Ho- 
meric village, as it has the poetic power of sug- 
gesting, and even re-enacting phases of old Homer's 
world. Little epical turns mark often its doings, 
which move around a central figure, as in ancient 
Greek legend. Lincoln as fabulist, as atlilete, as 



200 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART FIRST. 

captain in war, as lawgiver, we have seen center- 
ing his people about him, and making himself the 
representative and also the voice of the Folk-Soul 
in that little community, but large enough for liis 
present talent. At the same time he is taking 
quite a course in self-education through the Printed 
Page, truly his University in the right sense, for 
it universalizes him, carrying him far beyond ihe 
narrow bounds of his village. Then comes the 
peculiar finale, still poetic in an actual tragedy and 
comedy, which give, not the one homogeneous side, 
but the two wholl}^ heterogeneous, indeed, oppo- 
site sides of Lincoln and of Human Nature, which 
are so difficult to synthesize into one character. 
Yet, how else can the man be complete — a whole 
and not merely a half? 

But now Lincoln, having played all his village 
parts, is done with New Salem, and New*Salem is 
done with itself. Hardly again will it be his lot 
to breathe such a sunny idyllic atmosphere, and to 
build out of life's stray shreds sucli a completely 
rounded poem, which, indeed, he never sang, not 
having the gift of music, but nevertheless acted to 
the end. Two exits, then, we have at this point: 
exit Lincoln from New Salem, and exit New Salem 
itself. What next? Behold: the two pieces of 
floating driftwood come to anchorage. 



CHAPTER THIRD. 

(Betting ancbore^. 

Lincoln's transition from New Salem was not 
the work of a day. We can trace him slowly and 
doubtless painfully severing the tie for more than 
a year. In the fall of 1836 he was licensed to 
practice law, which he had been directly studying 
for some two years, and indirectly much longer. 
His enrolment as a member of the bar at Springfield 
took place in March, 1837, after his return from 
Vandalia, where he had played the distinguished 
part of capital-mover. This honor he shared with 
the rest of the "Long Nine," upon whom ban- 
quets and toasts were showered for their deed, 
heroic in the eyes of Springfield. 

Still the entrance of Lincoln into Springfield as 
a permanent resident and famous legislator was 
not in the form of a triumph. His first appear- 
ance has been recorded by Joshua F. Speed, to 
whose store his good genius led him straightway. 
The account of Speed runs: "He had ridden into 
town on a borrowed horse with no earthly prop- 
erty save a pair of saddle-bags containing a few 
clothes." Lincoln wished to buy some bedding, 
which cost seventeen dollars. But he could not 
pay it, and asked for credit till Christmas, saying 
that if his experiment as a lawyer was a success, 

(201) 



202 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

he could pay then. But he added: "If I fail in 
this I do not know that I can ever pay you." 
With these words the cloud descended, which, one 
thinks, may have hovered over him all the way 
from New Salem. ''I never saw a sadder face," 
says Speed, who grew sympathetic, and made on 
the spot the extraordinary offer to the ungainly 
stranger: "I have a double bed up stairs which 
you are perfectly welcome to share with me." 
Lincoln grasped his saddle-bags, cHmbed to the 
room, and set them down on the floor. Descend- 
ing soon with radiant countenance he exclaimed 
to his benefactor: "Well, Speed, I'm moved." 

Surely the Gods have not deserted Lincoln, nor 
Speed. It is a memorable act of kindness whose 
consequences weave themselves into the lives of 
both men, yea, into coming history. That home- 
less stranger is really on his way to the Presidency 
when he enters Speed's store at Springfield and 
is given shelter. Never will he forget that un- 
paralleled act of hospitality, which has rendered 
the doer, and even doer's family, immortal. 

Lincoln is now located, having made one of the 
important transitions of his life, which in its out- 
ward environment may be stated as the transition 
from -New Salem to Springfield. His surveyorship 
was a kind of bridge for him between these two 
places. As already indicated. New Salem was a 
sinking town, it had a rather fast life, too fast to 
endure. A hope-raiser and a hope-dasher it was; 



CHAPTER THIRD — GETTING ANCHORED. 203 

Lincoln had run through its whole gamut of up 
and down, and now he has to jump or sink with 
it, for it refuses to drift longer, but is surely going 
to the bottom. The great fact of Lincoln's transi- 
tion to Springfield is that he gets anchored, first 
anchoring it as the permanent Capital of the 
State. This he will not leave till he starts many- 
years later for the Capital of the Nation, to which 
he will likewise give a new and far firmer anchorage. 

Springfield was at this time a thriving town of 
some fifteen hundred people, who, for the most 
part, had come from the South, mainly from Ken- 
tucky. Thus it was an outgrowth of that great 
Southern migration into the North-West, which 
has been already set forth as a deep, though often 
unconscious reaction from slavery. Lincoln be- 
longed to that same migration, and found himself in 
congenial company. But Springfield had been a 
center of attraction for the more wealthy and aris- 
tocratic class of Southerners, while he in origin 
at least reckoned himself among the poor whites. 
Especially the Kentucky patriciate was well rep- 
resented and socially dominated the town. Still 
the ability and worth of Lincoln, chief capital- 
mover, were at once recognized. 

Lincoln has, accordingly, gotten out of a float- 
ing into an anchoretl community, and thus has 
something to tie to, namely, the primal connnu- 
nal institution. This we may well deem the first 
requisite of a settled life. Then he has concen- 



204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

tratecl himself upon a single vocation, the law, 
toward which he has long been drifting, through 
all sorts of sinuosities ; at last he is centered pjo- 
fessionally. How many different callings, did he 
not pursue at New Salem, trying to anchor his 
economic existence! He soon drops surveying 
even, being able to make a living at law; nor do 
his legislative duties seem to weigh him down when 
he gets to the Capital, l^hough he is elected twice 
afterwards. Now he becomes definitely political, 
a Henry Clay Whig, having moulted completely 
his Jackson Democracy, of which he still bore 
traces in New Salem. But in the Presidential cam- 
paign of 183G, he had wholly shed his Democratic 
snake-skin and loft it behind. Moreover, he be- 
came a very deft organizer of State politics, a skill 
which he will use to good purpose hereafter. 

A chief clement in the culture of Lincoln during 
this part of his Springfield period was society. 
Really he entered a new social class, the aforesaid 
Kentucky patriciate, composed of the lawyers, 
officials, professionals generally, to whom must be 
added the leading business men, notably his 
friend Speed. The town was also full of Kentucky 
ladies, married and unmarried, well bred and 
socially agreeable, and beautiful of course. The 
gawky farmer-boy and the rude New Salem 
athlete and story-teller is going to get some 
polish, or is at least to see refined manners. 
Parties, balls, social visits now take up a portion 



CHAPTER THIRD — GETTING ANCHORED. 205 

of Lincoln's time, and give him their training, 
while he still can absorb it; there is no doubt 
that society was attractive to him, even if he 
never became a stunning beau of the exquisite 
type. This experience was also a part of his Ap- 
prenticeship: moreover he came to understand 
Kentucky well in and through Springfield, which 
knowledge will perform its great service in his 
skillful treatment of that State during the Civil 
War. As he left Kentucky when a mere child, he 
could not know much about it; he became ac- 
quainted with it in Springfield, especially with 
the character of its ruling class. 

One asks what literature did Lincoln study 
during these years? He probably did not neglect 
the Printed Page to which he had shown hitherto 
such devotion; but he paid more attention to 
human intercourse and less to books. As he is at 
the center, he gets to know the political leaders 
of the State through whom the Folk-Soul is 
reached, as well as the strings of partisan net- 
work always radiating out from the Capital. Or- 
atory he had already cultivated, but political 
organization he now studied and became an ex- 
pert. Lincoln got to know the politician, where 
strong and where weak; he grew naturally to 
be one himself, or rather the leader of them 
in his State, till he mounted above them, yet 
through them, to the Nation. He was well 
aware that the politician has his place in 



206 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

our system of political parties, being the chief 
means of reaching and organizing the scattered 
masses of the People, So Lincoln had his ap- 
prenticeship to wire-pulling, and to touching the 
salient motives of men who were to be his instru- 
ments. Sitting at the center of the State cobweb, 
he learned how to move its fine filaments extend- 
ing to the circumference. The politician, though 
in disfavor, has to be, but he ought to be con- 
trolled, and not permitted to become an end 
unto himself. We shall often see I^incoln em- 
ploying him but subordinating him to the su- 
preme end of the Nation, yea of the World's 
History. This the master could not have done 
without knowing his servant to the bottom, with- 
out his having been such a servant once himself 
in the time of his Apprenticeship. 

The present period of Lincoln's life lasts, as we 
conceive it, till his marriage in 1842, which is his 
final anchoring in the Family, now his own, and 
not 'his father's. It thus runs some six years, or 
nearly' so, quite as long as his stay at New Salem. 
But the latter is far better known, and can be fol- 
lowed in considerably greater detail. The reason 
seems to be that Lincoln, when he went to Spring- 
field, no longer lived such an open communal hfe; 
his law practice did not bring hhn so much in con- 
tact with all the people: his political activity was 
more secretive, Ijeing devoted rather to manage- 
ment than to personal electioneering. But chiefly 



CHAPTER THIRD — GETTING ANCHORED. 207 

his social ambition changed; without giving up 
wholly his popular bent, he became strongly at- 
tached to Springfield's select patriciate, chiefly 
Kentuckian, which furnished so many of his 
warmest friends and supporters. This attach- 
ment he will carry with him into the Presi- 
dency. Lincoln's social aspiration would seem to 
shine through this further fact : the heroines of his 
three chief love-affairs belonged to the class above 
that in which placed himself, indeed all three of 
them were blue-blooded Kentucky girls, as already 
noted. 

How different these six years from the preced- 
ing six ! The central figure drops into the back- 
ground, and Lincoln's manifold heroship, so prom- 
inent in the village, seems quite snuffed out in the 
Capital. But with it vanished also that little 
poetical world of which he was the chief incarna- 
tion, and of whose pivotal deeds he stood forth as 
the leader. Not the small community now but the 
whole State is present in its officials, whose great- 
ness naturally overtopped the hero of diminutive 
New Salem. But Lincoln must move into the 
larger field and strive for its possession also, 
though he has to pass through a time of eclipse 
during this new stage of his Apprenticeship. The 
routine of a humdrum profession he has to learn 
and follow instead of the varied kaleidoscopic turns 
and changes of ''a piece of floating driftwood." From 
poetiy he must come down, down to prose, which 



208 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

has also its right of existence, particularly in Illi- 
nois, with its dead level of prairie. To the reader 
short must be these six years, though they were 
probably long to Lincoln. 

Still he remains story-teller, wherever he is; 
even a champion he becomes, not in bloody war 
against the barbarians, but in a bloodless duel, 
transcendently serio-comic. Then he gets mar- 
ried. Of these unheroic years we shall patch 
together a few of the more significant details which 
have risen to the surface in detached bits. 

I. 

Legislative. 

The second term of Lincoln in the Illinois Leg- 
islature was the most active and important of his 
four terms. He met with leading men from every 
part of the State and formed their acquaintance; 
also, he took their measurement, which he care- 
fully stored up in his mind for future use. In the 
previous session (1834-6) he was more the quiet 
student, watching Public Opinion as it crystallized 
itself into law through the legislative departmsnt 
of the government — the peculiar process of the 
American Folk-Soul, which must first get a con- 
viction and then make it legal. But what moves 
the Folk-Soul to such conviction antedating the 
work of legislation? That is a very significant 
question which will occupy Lincoln later, especially 



LEGISLATIVE. 209 

in his debate with Douglas. For instance in re- 
gard to slavery, the People came to have a certain 
strong conviction, of which Lincoln rose to be first 
the expounder and then the realizer, even through 
war. But whence originates that conviction, 
which enters the popular mass and kneads the 
same as its protoplasmic material ere making itself 
the principle of government? To catch a glimpse 
of its supernal source we have to ascend the 
heights of Universal History, of which the given 
People or Nation is one stage or epoch, participat- 
ing just through such conviction in the world- 
historical movement of the Ages. Now Lincoln, 
we may repeat, is preparing in this Apprenticeship 
of his to be the mediator between these two Powers 
which we have already designated as the Folk-Soul 
and the World-Spirit. 

At present, however, we are to see Lincoln in 
one of his earlier stages of development: from the 
limited communal Hfe of New Salem he is passing 
into a knowledge of his State through his legisla- 
tive experience. In 1837 Illinois felt a prodigious 
desire for expansion, which expressed itself in the 
demand for internal improvements at the expense 
of the public treasury. There was to be a network 
of. canals intersecting and connecting all parts of 
the State; with surprise we hear of a scheme for 
conjoining the Illinois river with Lake Michigan by 
a canal — a work now in process of fulfilment. A 
system of railroatls was also planned — especially 

14 



210 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

one was to bisect the State from East to West, 
running from Danville to Quincy. Nor was the 
improvement of the rivers forgotten, though the 
Sangamon fared badly. In fact, Lincoln himself, 
quitting New Salem, seems also to have quite 
abandoned his yellow-tressed water-nymph, who 
had exerted in former years such a fascinating 
power over his love and his imagination. Typical 
of his changed spirit is the fact that the Sangamon 
no longer flows through his life. 

Still we might say that the former dream of the 
little community has expanded to be the dream of 
the whole State of Illinois, which becomes as full 
of chimerical projects as was ever New Salem. 
Lincoln as its representative seems to have carried 
its fever with him to the Capital at Vandalia, 
where it spread to the entire legislative body, 
which, under the influence of the epidemic, made 
enactments which can only be called delirious. At 
last the crisis of the malady came, and it was a 
crisis — that of 1837, well-known for its virulence 
in our financial history. The whole people shared 
the delusion, and their representatives simply en- 
acted the popular craze into law. Very expensive 
was the debauch; from it the State contracted a 
debt which took a good while to pay. Herein the 
affair resembled the New Salem debt of Lincoln, 
who also had had his speculative fever some years 
before, and who often jocosely compared his stand- 
ing obligation to the national debt. Curious is it 



LEGISLATIVE. 211 

to note that all Illinois passed through the stage of 
fancy-fed New Salem with its navigable Sangamon 
and paid the penalty, as did also Lincoln^ whose 
career we are following in its corresponding envi- 
ronment. But the village perished of the malady 
while the State recovered, and Lincoln escaped by 
flight, carrying with him his burden of indebted- 
ness for many years. 

The chief personal feat, however, of Lincoln at 
this Legislature, was his share in getting the Capi- 
tal moved from Vandalia to Springfield. Nine 
members were chosen from Sangamon County, all 
of them strong men in mind and tall in stature; 
hence they became known as the ^'long nine." It 
is acknowledged that Lincoln was their leader, and 
had afterwards the name of being the capital- 
mover from friends and enemies. He made 
Springfield the Capital of the State, and then went 
there to live permanently, taking his place at the 
center. The way in which he performed this ex- 
ploit has been frequently the subject of animad- 
version. He is supposed to have done it chiefly 
by trading votes: You vote for my scheme and 
.I'll vote for yours; you want the new canal or the 
new railroad to come to your place; I'll help you 
with my vote and with my tongue, if need be, if 
you'll help me with yours. As there was a vast 
material just then for making such Imrgains 
through the many schemes for Public Improve- 
ments, Lincoln evidently used it for his end. That 



212 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

is the character of the politician everywhere and 
everywhen, and the statesman cannot escape it, 
looking out always for his quid pro quo. 

Nor must we fail to observe a little parenthetic 
clause in his appeal to, his electors, written from 
New Salem under the date of June 13th, 1836: 
"I go for admitting all whites to the right of 
suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means 
excluding females)." Here bursts out a stunning 
idea with a kind of detonation — one of his last 
New Salem explosions. Never afterwards did he 
pick up again that idea, which probably burnt his 
fingers a little in the handling. At any rate in 
Springfield he grew dumb, as far as the record 
goes, upon Woman's SufTrage. Why? Hard to 
tell; but with this single shot of his life at such 
game, we may conceive him turning away to the 
great coming question of the age, that of Slav- 
ery, upon which he levels in this Legislature 
his first thunderous broadside. 

II. 

Anti-Slavery Protest, 

. A pivotal act in his career Lincoln deemed his 
earliest anti-slavery document, which was entered 
upon the Illinois House Journal of March 3rd, 
1837, in the form of a Protest against certain Res- 
olutions passed by the Legislature. In his auto- 
biographic sketch of 1800 he gives the document 



ANTI-SLAVERY PROTEST. 213 

in full, with the statement that it "defined his po- 
sition on the slavery question; and so far as it 
goes, it was then the same that it is now." The 
following is the text of the protest, an undoubted 
composition of Lincoln, now 27 years old: 

''Resolutions on the subject of domestic slav- 
ery having passed both branches of the General 
Assembly at its present session, the under- 
signed hereby protest against the passage of the 
same. 

"They believe that the institution of slavery is 
founded both on injustice and bad policy, but that 
the promulgation of Abolition doctrines tends 
rather to increase than abate its evils. 

"They believe that the Congress of the United 
States has no power under the Constitution to in- 
terfere with the institution of slavery in the differ- 
ent States. 

"They believe that the Congress of the United 
States has the power under the Constitution to 
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but 
that the power ought not to be exercised unless at 
the request of the people of the District. 

"The difference between these opinions and 
those contained in the above resolutions is their 
reason for entering this Protest. 

Dan Stone, 
A. Lincoln, 
Representatives from the 

County of Sangamon." 



214 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

Such is the Protest, evidently composed by 
Liiicohi and throwing a search-hght forward 
through his whole future career to the end. The 
document is drawn with such care and the limits 
are observed with such nicety that he never had 
to explain it away or apologize for it afterwards. 
It bears testimony that he already saw the lines 
along which the great coming battle was to be 
fought victoriously. Possibly he already dreamed, 
for Lincoln was ambitious, that he might be the 
leader. 

We see laid down, accordingly, in the foregoing 
statement "so far as it goes," the hues of Lincoln's 
future attitude toward slavery, which Congress 
cannot interfere with whore it already exists, but 
which Congress can abolish in the District of Co- 
lumbia with the consent of its people. When he 
gets to Washington as representative, Lincoln will 
try his hand at this last business without success. 
The omission is striking: not a word about keeping 
slavery out of the Territories, the burning question 
of a later time. The fact is that this question was 
supposed to be settled so effectively by the Mis- 
souri Compromise that it was not worth the me:i- 
tion. But when that Compromise is repealed in 
1854, the territorial problem breaks out with new 
violence, and Lincoln takes from it his fiiiiil trend 
which lands him in the Presidency. 

Still the strong declaration is to he uoiod th:it 
"the institution of slavery is founded both o;i in- 



ANTI-SLAVERY PROTEST. 215 

justice and bad policy", is both a moral and an eco- 
nomic evil. In spite of his moral reprobation of 
it, Lincoln recognized its legal and constitutional 
right, and hence was not an abolitionist, and even 
deprecated abolitionism pure and simple. In this 
document we see that he already maintains that 
the opposition to slavery must be institutional, 
preserving Law and Constitution. At the same 
time we feel in it already the truth of one of his 
Presidential utterances: "I am naturally anti- 
slaveiy." In a little speech to an Indiana regi- 
ment he declares: "I have always thought that 
all men should be free. . . . Whenever I hear 
anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse 
to see it tried on him personally." Give him back 
his own, let him taste the consequences of his 
principle— that is universal justice. The moral 
spirit in Lincoln was very strong; just as strong 
was his institutional spirit. Yet slavery has intro- 
duced the bitterest conflict between the two — be- 
tween the moral and the institutional; which of 
the two must go to the wall? The exclusively 
moral man cries: Down with your institutions 
since they support slavery ; the exclusively institu- 
tional man cries: Down with your fanatical mo- 
rality which assails vested rights in Law and Con- 
stitution. Lincoln already sees and feels the acrid 
dualism which is to grow more and more disunit- 
ing and separative till it rends the American 
Folk-Soul in twain — which separation it is to be 



216 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

the peculiar work of Lincoln to overcome. Sig- 
nificant is it, therefore, to trace the presence of 
these two colliding elements in this earliest anti- 
slavery document of the Great Emancipator, who 
has at last to wipe out the source of the ever- 
harassing dualism and thus bring an inner peace to 
the hitherto self-conflicting Folk-Soul. 

One other name, that of Dan Stone, stands with 
Lincoln on the document, and is thereby eternized. 
No other members of that Legislature were will- 
ing to attach their signatures. Let it be noted 
that Lincoln has now begun to hear the World- 
Spirit, and even to voice it in a way; Dan Stone 
also heard it possibly, affixed his sign-manual to 
this early utterance of it, and then sank down for- 
ever into the sea of oblivion, in thought-stirring 
contrast to Lincoln. Why was the one individual 
chosen, and the other quite dismissed? Let that 
be the secret of the Powers who have the matter 
in hand; the scribe, looking backward, can only 
set down the fact in a reflective mood. 

But who of all those legislative members whose 
names are not signed to Lincoln's protest is the 
coming man on the other side of the burning ques- 
tion? In the ranks of the opposition yonder 
stands a stout, low-statured, rotund, rubicund 
youth, only 23 years old, who has been elected 
from Morgan County to this Legislature of 1836; 
he is the destined antagonist of Lincoln for a (juar- 
ter of a century, who wages with him a contest 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (2). " 217 

which we may conceive as starting here and last- 
ing till Lincoln is elected over him to be President 
of the United States. That is young Stephen A. 
Douglas, already noticed, but now to be looked at 
again. 

III. 

Lincoln and Douglas (2). 

Douglas, as member of the Legislature of LS36-8, 
had participated in the delirium of Public Ln- 
provcments, which left such a load of debt upon 
Illinois and intensified the financial crisis of 1837. 
Lincoln also had assisted in blowing that colossal 
bubble, having become an adept in a small way at 
New Salem. Here is a point in which both were 
at one, and likewise were in agreement with the 
People. A statement of Lincoln has come down 
that his great ambition was to be called the De- 
Witt Clinton of Illinois. But when the day of 
reckoning came with its sledge-hammer hand, Lin- 
coln did not propose repudiation either in his own 
case or in that of the State. He began probably 
now to receive his lasting title of honor, being 
famed as Honest Abe from the mouth of the Peo- 
ple. By way of contrast popular rumor has pre- 
served a saying of Douglas in a stump-speech ])e r- 
taining to the debt: "Illinois ought to be honr'st 
if she never paid a cent." In this double-work.ing 
oracle we may catch a gleam of a trait of Doviglas 
as politician; he would dodge an issue, and even 



218 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

ride two horses if necessary. Still we hold that 
Douglas was an institutional man in the deepest 
of him, even if he would play cuttle-fish when his 
enemies pursued him hotly (so Lincoln compared 
him), and would ink the waters about himself with 
his words so that nobody could tell quite where he 
stood. 

But now out of the thousands in Illinois, out of 
the millions in the United States, have been sifted 
two men who are standing face to face in the same 
deliberative body at the little dot called Vandalia, 
and begin their antagonistic, yea, their antipathetic 
careers. From this germinal point they will un- 
fold until they stand face to face before the thou- 
sands in IlUnois, and then before the mihions in 
the United States. These are the pair of Olympian 
wrestlers in whom the grand struggle of the time 
is to become incorporate, and of whom one must 
finally fling the other to the earth, showing himself 
the single towering victor in the mighty contest of 
the age. Many share with him the fame and 
honor, but he is the one altogether supereminent. 

The point at which the two careers may be best 
seen starting out on their divergent lines through 
the future, is the passage of the before-men- 
tioned Resolutions, against which Lincoln made 
his Protest. Douglas su])ported them, and may 
indeed have had a hand in preparing them, for 
tliey strike his ever-rocurring political key-note: 
Stop agitating this shn'cry (luestiou. They cannot 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (2). 219 

be called pro-slavery nor anti-slavery; but they do 
indicate a moral indifference to the great problem 
of the time. Thus they seem quite like Douglas, 
whose famous later statement was in regard to 
Kansas: Don't care — ''I don't care whether it 
(slavery) is voted up or down." In support of 
these Resolutions we may see Douglas taking his 
first step in his doctrine of indifference, a small 
step indeed, yet a step. 

The Protest of Lincoln differs from the Resolu- 
tions very little except in one striking particular, 
which asserts the belief "that the institution of 
slavery is founded both on injustice and bad 
policy." Thus the moral element is voiced in 
Lincoln's Protest, which was suppressed in the 
Resolutions, though these presented the institu- 
tional element, which, however, was not denied 
but re-asserted in the document of Lincoln. Sla- 
very is both a wrong and a curse — that must be 
proclaimed even while granting its constitutional 
rights. The logic here implies that the Constitu- 
tion contains a wrong which ought to be elimi- 
nated with time; that elimination is indeed Lin- 
coln's supreme coming task, now barely glimpsed, 
but unfolding more and more into light with the 
passing years. 

Douglas, adhering formally to transmitted insti- 
tutions, will dam out the rising moral conviction, 
which Lincoln will not only preserve but make 
institutional. Herein we behold their first polit- 



220 ABRAHAM LINCOLN^PART FIRST. 

ical differentiation, behold their divergent careers 
raying out from the common center at Van- 
dalia in 1837, till they embrace the State and the 
Nation. At present we can see that this rising 
moral conviction was the first faint irradiation of 
the approaching sun-up of the Age, the barely felt 
impress of the World-Spirit upon the Folk-Soul, 
which Lincoln already feels and starts to uttering. 
But Douglas has no such incipient stirring of the 
conscience from supernal sources, as far as can 
now be observed ; still, let it not be forgotten, he 
was an institutional man, and therein kept himself 
attuned to his people for a long time, and dis- 
tanced Lincoln. At last, however, he smote their 
moral conviction in the face and lost largely his 
popular hold. But we must recollect that in the 
last act of his life he showed his basic institutional 
character when Union and Constitution were as- 
sailed, and came to the aid of his life-long antag- 
onist in their support. 

So we are to grasp the original point in which 
Lincoln and Douglas are at one, and to which they 
will come back after a varied and circuitous de- 
flection of a fourth of a century. Antitypes 
they are indeed in their moral natures ; but insti- 
tutionally they rest upon the same basis of Union 
and Constitution. Li fact this is also th(> difft^r- 
ence between the before-mentioned Resolutions 
and Lincoln's Protest, which have also their same- 
ness. 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS {2). 221 

We have already noted that Lincoln moved 
from New Salem to Sprhigfiold after the close of 
the session of the Legislature in the spring of 
1837. But who is this other rosy young gentleman 
coming to live at the new Capital about the same 
time? It is Stephen A. Douglas, the hitherto un- 
conscious competitor of Lincoln; but now their ri- 
valry is to become conscious, being confined for a 
goodly time to a small locality. Each will get to 
know the other as his other, as his antitype, yet 
bound up with him in a sort of inseparable oppo- 
sition. The two greatest luminaries of Illinois 
now rise together and start to whirling about each 
other in a common orbit and toward the same 
goal, yet always antithetic and mutually repel- 
lent. Their very entrance into Springfield shows 
the typical contrast. Jolly, round, rubicund 
Douglas brings a public office along in his hand, 
always lucky; while lean, sallow, hollow-cheeked 
Lincoln brings a pair of saddle-bags equally lean 
and wrinkled with himself, riding on a bor- 
rowed horse, ''with the saddest face I ever saw," 
hardly knowing where to lay his head till kind- 
hearted Speed shares with him his own bed. 

During four years, till Douglas leaves Springfield 
in IS-H, the two antagonists meet at every charac- 
teristic point and strike fire. In the same profes- 
sion they tilt ; both are politicians but of opposite 
parties ; both are young fellows in society ; finally 
both seek the favor of the same woman. It must 



222 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

be deemed one of the chief experiences of Lincoln 
in this Springfield epoch that he comes to know 
his other human half as man, or his anti-self, in vis- 
ible active or counteractive incarnation. In about 
every important relation of life he runs upon and 
clashes with his counterpart, his antithetic dmible, 
not as ghost by any means, but in living, victo- 
rious energy. 

Still these are the two coming Great Men of the 
State and Nation, and will approve themselves 
such. They are both of the North-West and rep- 
resent its dualism, its growing struggle between 
the moral and institutional elements, each of which 
has been roused into activity through the question 
of slavery. The statesmen of the Atlantic coast 
may be more learned, polished, yea grammatical; 
but it is the North-West which takes the chief 
part in restoring the Union and saving the Nation, 
furnishing the leaders, both civil and military. Is 
there any reason for this fact in the logic of his- 
tory? We believe that there is — but more on this 
theme hereafter. 

Returning to the play of counterparts at Spring- 
field, some of their main points of emulation and 
of collision ma}'' be specially noticed. They came 
from Vandalia leaders of their respective parties. 
Whig and Democratic; but this leadership they 
must have shared with other older men in the 
service. Douglas entered Springfield with a fresh 
political appointment — that of Register of Lands; 



i 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (3) 223 

yet in a few months he was nominated as candidate 
for Congress by his party. The Whigs selected as 
their nominee John T. Stuart, Lincoln's law- 
partner. 

(a) Thus arose their first political tournament 
before the people, Lincoln ardently supporting his 
friend and partner against Douglas. Stuart was 
elected, but by so narrow a margin that a contest 
was threatened. Douglas, however, gave it up. 
An extract from a letter of Lincoln to Stuart, 
wdiile the latter was at Washington in 1839, gives 
a, glimpse of Lincoln's view of Douglas: "A report 
is in circulation that he (Douglas) has abandoned 
the idea of going to Washington, though the re- 
port does not come in a very authentic form. . 
. . You know that if we had heard Douglas say 
that he had abandoned the contest, it would not 
be very authentic." To the last Lincoln was in- 
clined to discount the strict veracity of his rival 
in political utterances. 

(6) Next we may place their oratorical emula- 
tion, which culminated in a double set of partisan 
speeches before a Springfield audience, four to a 
side. Of course Lincoln and Douglas were two of 
the contestants. We have still Lincoln's s(nne- 
what lengthy speech on the occasion. Of its de- 
tails we need- not say much, except to note the 
fact that he, now conscious of his real foe, directs 
his main battery against Douglas. Discussions 
between them and others on street-corners and in 



224 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

stores were common before an interested crowd of 
spectators. Sometimes words were followed by 
blows, as the following citation (Works I., p. 40) 
from one of Lincoln's letters indicates: "Yester- 
day Douglas, having chosen to consider himself 
insulted by something in the Journal, undertook 
to cane Francis (the editor) in the street. Francis 
caught him by the hair and jammed him back 
against a mi-rket-cart, where the matter ended by 
Francis being pulled away from him. The whole 
affair was so ludicrous that Francis and everybody 
else (Douglas excepted) have been laughing about 
it ever since." So reports the rival; but take 
care, Lincoln, your turn will come next in far more 
ridiculous affair, in a serio-comic sham-duel. 

(c) We catch a few indications that there was 
also considerable social rivalry between the two 
contestants. It has been noticed that c|uite a 
sprinkling of the Kentucky patriciate had settled 
in Springfield, and that Lincoln devoted himself a 
good deal to their society. Douglas, th(>ugh a 
Yankee, was not behindhand in the favor of the 
ladies; indeed, when the two were dressed up and 
at "the cotillion party," the contrast m ist have 
been peculiarly striking. It is said that Lincoln 
preferred the society of men, and would slip off 
from the dance to a group of listeners, to whom 
he would begin telling stories. This was indeed 
his field, in which he was consciou.-^ of his su^)eri- 
ority. Douglas certainly looked better than his 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (2). 225 

rival in the parlor and ball-room, for this reason, 
if for none other, that garments could not be made 
to fit Lincoln, with his spindle shanks and long 
lopping arms, ending in enormous feet and hands. 
So Douglas was a far more perfect clothes-horse 
than Lincoln, and won the game in stylish appear- 
ance — an important point with the ladies. 

(rf) The summit of this personal rivalry in 
Springfield was reached when they both became 
suitors for the love of the same woman. Miss 
Mary Todd had already, it seems, become Lin- 
coln's betrothed when Douglas appeared on the 
scene, determined to cut his rival out. The couple 
"promenaded the streets, arm-in-arm, frequently 
passing Lincoln," who proposed to throw up the 
affair, but did not then succeed. The result was 
that the young lady took sick with a double love, 
her case being similar to that of Ann Rutledge. It 
so happened that her brother-in-law was her physi- 
cian, who, having gotten out of her the secret 
cause of her illnes, went to Douglas and begged 
him to desist, "which he did with great reluc- 
tance" (Herndon). 

It may be here noted that Douglas and Miss 
Todd, later Mrs. Lincoln, had striking points of sim- 
ilarity, physically and mentally. Both were stout- 
statured, rotund in shape and general contour, 
and ruddy. Both were brilliant of mind, showy, 
and seemingly of like temperaments. Both formetl 
a striking contrast to Lincoln in spirit and ex- 

15 



226 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

ternally. Why did they not unite in wedlock? 
Rumor has it that Mrs. Lincoln once told a 
friend that "she loved Douglas, and but for her 
promise to marry Lincoln, would have accepted 
him." Be that as it may, she takes, of her two 
rivals, not her likeness but rather her ojjposite — 
the Love-God being notoriously a contrary little 
imp anyhow. It seems to have been the strange 
fate of Lincoln that he wooed and wedded a kind 
of female Douglas, his feminine antitype. Heavens! 
what will become of him, and of her, too! 

But in 1841 Douglas quits Springfield, no doubt 
to the great relief of Lincoln, who could not help 
seeing that in worldly success and promotion his 
rival outstripped him. Douglas was advanced to 
a new and higher position, that of Supreme Judge 
of the State for the district of Quincy, to which 
he moved. He had been the chief cause of 
abolishing the old Judiciary by legislative enactment 
— against which high-handed act Lincoln with his 
partisan friends made another protest in the Legis- 
lature — and then the abolisher received one of the 
vacancies which he had made, one of the new 
Judgeships. From this office Douglas obtained 
his title of Judge, which Lincoln usually gave him 
instead of that of Senator in their later debates, 
possibly with a spice of irony in such a designa- 
tion. 

In this Springfield rivalry lasting four years, 
the two grand protagonists of the coming era find 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (2). 227 

each other out as to ability and character. They 
become conscious of their rivalry, which at last 
reaches down to the deepest fact of the age, and 
drives them to take sides as leaders of the two oppos- 
ing principles which are slowly engaging in a 
death-grapple throughout the Nation. This mu- 
tual self-awareness, won at Springfield, was an im- 
portant node in the careers of both; each has 
selected the other as the foremost champion in op- 
position to himself in the race for the ultimate 
prize, which dimly hovers in the distance before 
both. Indeed what bright American boy has not 
been told that he might be President? Lincoln 
and Douglas were both exceedingly ambitious, and 
their ambition was political, which could end only 
in the one supreme goal. Each gets clarified, 
through a quadrennial competition on one small 
spot, about himself and about his rival; each 
comes to know the other as antitypal in spirit and 
antagonistic in aim. This long personal contact, 
with its reciprocal rivalry, must be en:iphasized as 
very significant for both, since it never takes place 
again; it is a foreshadowing and indeed a prepa- 
ration through intimate personal knowledge for 
the distant contest when is to be settled which of 
the two is to have his principle and indeed his 
character regnant in the Nation as an ever-living 
exemplar and ideal. 

The struggle between Lincoln and Douglas was 
long, serious, and strenuous, pertaining to the 



228 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

weightiest matters in the hfe of the individual and 
of the Nation. But now rises again a kind of carica- 
ture of it along Lincoln's pathway; another gro- 
tesque begins its sportive counterplay in which he 
takes a hand, almost in spite of himself, for how 
can he help it? Upon the Springfield stage there 
enters a comic character, or easily capable of 
being made such; with him Lincoln gets en- 
tangled in a comic conflict, and is made to enact 
his part in a new comedy, not now of Love but 
of Honor. 

IV. 

Lincoln in a Duel. 

Of course it was not a real duel winding up in 
bloodshed, but a sort of acted travesty on the 
genuine thing; very threatening at first, it blew off 
in bluster. Lincoln has been blamed for his share, 
and he felt much mortified when it was over. 
Still, nature had to assert itself, and Lincoln was 
double-natured, being entlowcd equally with a sigh 
and a laugh as counterbreaths of the one soul. 
Very serious and deep-lying was his emulation of 
Stephen A. Douglas, whose strong, sober talent he 
had to meet with a corresponding one of his own ; 
but a burlesque was his encounter with James 
Shields, who was himself a burlesque and easily 
made Lincoln bubble over with burl(>squery by a 
kind of reactionary sympathy. So another comic 



LINCOLN IN A DUEL. 229 

interlude weaves itself into the many-colored 
texture of Lincoln's Apprenticeship. 

As the result of a recent Democratic victory, a 
new auditor of the State appeared at Springfield 
and took possession of his office. This was James 
Shields, born in Tyrone County, Ireland, and gifted 
with all the brilliancy, fight and folly of his race. 
His character and talent were transcendently 
Celtic, which the Saxon finds so hard to under- 
stand and to deal with, not only over the sea but 
also here in America. Shields had the native sud- 
den coruscation of his people, if not in word, at least 
in deed; but he had little staying power. His in- 
itiative was his best, flashing suddenly with daz- 
zling splendor, and then going out in darkness. 
He was chosen Senator of the United States at 
three different times, not once to succeed himself 
in the same State, but from three different States 
— Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri. Never has the 
thing been done before or since ; such a feat could 
only be performed by the typical Irishman at his 
best — truly a wonder-working magician able to 
conjure up about himself Senatorial strokes of 
lightning, three of them, from wholly separate 
places. That ability no Anglo-Saxon ever possessed. 
Shields showed the same talent in his military 
career. In the Mexican War he was appointed 
outright a Brigadier-General, to the great surprise 
of all who knew him; and then to their still 
greater surprise he came back a military hero of 



230 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST, 

the first water, having received a wound, with 
many another poor fameless fellow, in a sudden 
dash at Cerro Gordo. In the Civil War the man 
whose blood his Honor now clamors for, repeats 
the act of making him Brigadier-General, though 
Lincoln probably cracked many a joke about that 
former unfathomable appointment. And Shields 
is said to have won at the battle of Winchester 
the only victory ever gained over Stonewall Jack- 
son, though his laurels here have been contested. 

So Shields, as a high State official, enters the 
circle of Springfield's best society. He was an 
ardent partisan, ardent in everything. It is said 
that he undertook to play a very effusive social 
part to the staid Kentucky patriciate, who began 
to ridicule him. To this was added the unfortu- 
nate habit of not only shaking but of squeezing the 
tender hands of the young ladies to whom he 
might be introduced. Such at least is the infer- 
ence to be drawn from the repeated allusions in 
the letters which afterwards came out in print. 
Then Shields could not suppress in polite society 
a certain amount of self-glorification, due of 
course to his transcendent abilities and to his 
famous exploits. 

Into this harmless ridicule an unpopular meas- 
ure, in which Shields participated, put a sharp 
sting. He with other State officers refused by 
a published order to receive for taxes the bills of 
the State Banks, which had become nmch dcpre- 



LINCOLN IN A DUEL. 231 

ciated in the crisis of 1837. Large quantities of 
this paper were held by Democratic farmers of 
the State, who had elected these very officials and 
who began to murmur discontent on all sides. 
The Whigs, largely in the minority in the State as 
a whole, saw their opportunity and egged on the 
quarrel, hoping thereby to lay up a good stock 
of political capital for their own future use. 
Through one cunning device or other they endeav- 
ored to widen the breach, now gaping ominously, 
between the Democratic voter and his officers. 

Lincoln saw the humor of the situation, always 
tempting to that one side of his nature before 
mentioned, and, as a good Whig, resolved to add 
his mite to help forward the cause. In this mood 
he wrote a rollicking burlesque of a letter ad- 
dressed to "Dear Mr. Printer" from the Lost 
Townships, dated August 27th, 1842, and ascribed 
to "Aunt Becca," a country widow who wants to 
"know in your next paper whether this Shields is 
a Whig or Democrat?" The satire is first directed 
against the Democratic party, and then concen- 
trates upon Shields, who is designated in the letter 
by an irate Democrat as "a fool and har," for 
which epithets the reasons are given. But the cul- 
mination is a farcical picture of Shields at a 
Springfield party and his behavior toward the 
young ladies, speaking with "a most exquisite 
contortion of his face," and indulging in that awful 
hand-s(iueczing of the fair ones lasting "about a 



232 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

quarter of an hour." The letter from the Lost 
Townships was printed in a local newspaper and 
became at once the talk of the town. 

It should be here noted that this production of 
Lincoln is written in the Western dialect and dia- 
logue, with the corresponding local grammar and 
spelling. It is one of the earlier instances of a 
literary form which has developed enormously 
since Lincoln's little skit. On this side it is a 
kind of prophecy of the modern dialect novel and 
novelette, which seem to be exploring and exploit- 
ing every corner of the country. Lincoln loved 
this sort of fiction, which apparently culminated 
for him in the letters of Petroleum V. Nasby from 
the ''Confederate X Roads" — (compare his letter 
from the "Lost Townships"). 

"Dana," asked Lincoln some thirty-two years 
after the present time, "have you ever read any of 
the writings of Petroleum V. Nasb}^?" Dana 
was a literary man, able writer of leading ed- 
itorials, but in those days Assistant Secretary of 
War (18G4). He rephed to the President's ques- 
tion: "No, sir; I have only looked at some of 
them and they seemed to me quite funny." Dana 
evidently appreciates but does not sympathize 
with Nasby; Stanton, Secretary of War, also pres- 
ent, neither appreciates nor sympathizes, and so 
does not understand one full side of Lincoln's 
nature. The three men were gathered to scan the 
returns of the Presidential election of 1SG4, which 



LINCOLN IN A DUEL. 233 

were coming in by telegraph. There is no doubt 
that Lincohi was deeply anxious about the result 
of that election, nor was he then without solicitude 
for Grant in Virginia. But during a little lull in 
the returns, he breaks out: "Well, let me read 
you a specimen"; then he pulled out a thin, yellow- 
covered pamphlet from his breast-pocket and 
began reading. The rest can be told in the words 
of Mr. Dana: 

"jMr. Stanton viewed this proceeding with great 
impatience, as I could see, but Mr. Lincoln paid 
no attention to that. He would read a page or 
story, pause to con a new election telegram, and 
then open the book and go ahead with a new pas- 
sage. Finally Mr. Chase came in and presently 
Mr. ^^'hitelaw Reid, and then the reading was in- 
terrupted. Mr. Stanton went to the door and 
beckoned me into the next room. I shall never 
forget the fire of his indignation at what seemed 
to him to be mere nonsense. He could not under- 
stand, apparently, that it was by the relief which 
these jests afforded to the strain of the mind 
under which Lincoln had been so long living, and 
to the natural gloom of a desponding tempera- 
ment — this was Mr. Lincoln's prevailing charac- 
teristic — that the safety and sanity of his intelli- 
gence was maintained and preserved." 

Such was Mr. Charles A. Dana's view of the 
foregoing side of Lincoln's character-, in our opin- 
ion the correct view, gained l)y a very competent 



234 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

Judge through daily intercourse with the President 
for a considerable time under the most trying cir- 
cumstances. Only one qualification we would like 
to make: Desponding gloom was not Lincoln's 
prevailing characteristic, for it did not prevail with 
him, he always overcame it in the end, yea, was 
always overcoming it, transforming it into hope, 
faith, optimism. Read his writings, look into his 
actions; he never despaired morally of the extinc- 
tion of slavery, nor institutionally of the preserva- 
tion of Union and Constitution. At the same 
time melancholy was a dark, ever-present, surging 
undercurrent in his soul, a temperamental inherit- 
ance, which he had to battle with incessantly and 
put down. Have we not seen him doing so al- 
ready? Indeed, from this inner war and its vic- 
tory flowed his main strength for the great outer 
war which raged about him with so many harass- 
ing fluctuations. Blue devils and black were al- 
ways clutching him, but he whirled them down 
into their own gloomy Inferno, showing undoubt- 
edly many external signs of the conflict, among 
these, doubtless, the reading of Nasby. The gates 
of Hell, to apply to him one of his scriptural allu- 
sions, could not prevail against him. Dana's 
suggestion, however, that Nasby's humor was one 
of Lincoln's ways of relieving his overburdened 
spirit holds good, and is generally recognized at 
the present time. The further hint, that his sanity 
was preserved through such a safety-valve for liis 



LINCOLN IN A DUEL. 235 

volcanic emotional upheavals, is also worthy of 
the best thought of the student of Lincoln, and 
receives no little confirmation from certain experi- 
ences of Lincoln's earlier life, as already narrated. 
Picking up again the letter from the Lost Town- 
ships, we find that it was not the end of the litera- 
ture on this subject. The fountain having been 
tapped, two young ladies, friends of Lincoln, pro- 
duced a little spirt on their own account, still in 
dialect and dialogue. In this second letter (not 
by Lincoln, recollect), the country widow offers, 
for the sake of peace, to marry Shields, whose 
fighting ambition is also burlesqued; indeed, he is 
half dared to a duel in the mockery of these two 
irresponsible maidens. Then, again, that rich 
theme of hand-squeezing is introduced, of course, 
being mentioned no less than four times in the 
brief epistle. We infer from the repeated stress 
upon the matter that these two young ladies must 
have carried their hands in a sling at least three 
days after their first encounter with the gallant 
Irishman. Finally comes the third effusion by the 
same authoresses, who now drop prose and take 
to poetry, to rhymed couplets of the Popian style, 
possibly suggestetl by the Dimciad, celebrating the 
marriage : 

" Rebecca the widow has gained Erin's son." 

The two young ladies who have unwittingly 
done an historic deed by having a hand in getting 
Lincoln into this scrape, are not nameless to the 



236 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

biographer. Miss Todd (afterwards Mrs. Lincoln) 
and Miss Jayne (afterwards Mrs. Lyman 1?rumbull) 
are handed down to fame as the roHicking, bur- 
lesquing young ladies who dared scoff at Shields 
as duelist, and thus, it would seem, brought the 
duel to a head. (There is a question about the 
authorship of these letters. All three have been 
supposed to be the work of Miss Todd. But Lin- 
coln in his apology acknowledges the first only and 
disclaims the others. Internal evidence points 
decidedly in the same direction). 

All the town began to titter at Shields, and to 
repeat the funny points of the letters, interspersed 
with fresh anecdotes and malicious witticisms, to 
which Shields' roaring gave new zest. He could 
not appear on the street without being the center 
of grinning faces. It was a situation that the hot 
Irishman would meet by fight — fight the general 
guffaw, or at least the source of it, which Shields 
soon found to be Lincoln. Retraction or blood is 
the alternative which he presents. Lincoln refuses 
to retract under a menace, and under such an 
"assumption of facts." Various attempts at re- 
conciliation failed, and both parties proceeded to 
the field of honor, which was on a desert island in 
the Mississippi, not far from Alton, to which 
nobody was permitted to go except the parties 
concerned. 

Lincoln, as the challenged party, had the right 
to select the weapons, and he chose cavalry broad- 



LINCOLN IN A DUEL. 237 

swords of the largest size, well adapted to his 
great strength and the wide sweep of his arm. 
Most suggestive is the second of his preliminaries, 
which runs as follows : A strong plank is to be 
fixed "between us, which neither is to pass his foot 
over upon the forfeit of his life." (The seconds, 
seemingly, are to shoot the violator on the spot). 
Then each has a line which he is not to pass, else 
it will be deemed a surrender of the fight. 

Let us omit all the outside details, which are 
voluminous enough, and see if we cannot probe 
at once to the very crisis of the affair, its turning- 
point from war to peace. In our judgment this is 
found in the words of a spectator which Miss Tar- 
bell (Life of Lincoln I., p. 288) has preserved and 
which we shall quote: "I watched Lincoln closely 
while he sat on his log awaiting the signal to 
fight. His face was grave and serious. . . . 
Presently he reached over and picked up one of 
the swords, which he drew from its scabbard. 
Then he felt along the edge of the weapon with 
his thumb, like a barber feels the edge of a razor, 
raised himself up to his full height, stretched out 
his long arms and clipped off a twig from above 
his head with the sword. There was not another 
man of us who could have reached anywhere near 
that twig." 

Such was, we have to think, the i)ivotal act of 
the duel, whereby it was whisked about from fight 
to friendship. For short Shields, "who could 



238 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

walk under Lincoln's arm," must have seen that 
long, outstretched sword of Destiny clipping off 
the twig above with some foreboding of what it 
meant; his associates must have seen it, too, as a 
kind of prognostication of approaching Fate. 
There is little doubt that Lincoln, sitting on his 
log with ''face grave and serious," evidently think- 
ing and watching, seized the right psychologic 
moment and enacted a brief prelude by way of 
forewarning, which whispers afar something like 
this : Do you see how I can reach out and tap 
you at any point without you grazing me in re- 
turn? 

At any rate, the duel came suddenly to an end. 
Shields was pacified, of course, through the inter- 
vention of friends, and Lincoln did not need any 
pacifying. Both the duelists returned across the 
river to Alton on the same boat, chatting together 
in a free-and-easy manner. Report has it that a 
crimson garment was seen lying in the boat by the 
neck-craning crowd on shore with a horrible shud- 
der; but when lifted up the bloody face-cloth was 
found to be a red shirt spread over a log. It is 
not told who worked that scheme as a finale bur- 
lesquing the whole duel, Or more probably, spim 
a fitting yarn for the epilogue of the comedy. 

So Lincoln has i)Iayed another grotesque part 
in life, this time on the field of Honor. Very 
unwilling was his act, and remained a repugnant 
memory. Ilerndon reports him once saying: "I 



LINCOLN IN A DUEL. 239 

did not intend to hurt Shields unless I did so 
clearly in self-defence." Very possible seems his 
assertion: "I could have si^lit him from the crown 
of his head to the end of his backbone." That is 
just what he intended probably to impress upon 
Shields at the pivotal moment by the clipping of 
the twig overhead with his sword. But why tlid 
conscientious, Quaker-strained Lincoln accept such 
a challenge? We must deem him influenced by 
the Kentucky patriciate with whom he associated, 
and who, like the South generally, accepted the 
code in the last resort. He could not escape his 
environment, which would not let him back down 
at the ruffles of a little Hibernian fighting-cock. 
Verily his grotesquery has now found its limit in a 
peck of trouble. It is curious that political ene- 
mies never used this duel against him in later 
years, excepting possibly old Peter Cartright. 
Why did not Douglas, who must have known all 
about it, dilate upon the fact, particularly at Free- 
port, before an audience composed largely of duel- 
hating New Englanders? Possibly he feared Lin- 
coln's boomerang, for Douglas was also a pug- 
nacious little rooster, and had been in many a 
scrimmage. During the Presidential election noth- 
ing seems to have been heard of the awful charge 
that Lincoln had ofTered to fight a duel but never 
fought it. 

And now from this one case dueling s))rcads 
out and becomes epidemic in Springfield. Shields, 



240 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

having started on his war-dance with, many a 
lyrical saltation and exaltation, sends a second 
challenge to a new offender who offers to fight ''at 
to-morrow's sunrise in Bob Allen's meadow with 
rifles at one hundred yards' distance" — but no 
shot again. Then the seconds to Lincoln and 
Shields get embroiled in the quarrel of their prin- 
cipals, and prepare for a bloody encounter, which 
ends in a long and desperate paper- war without 
anybody getting hurt. Says Lincoln in a letter to 
his friend Speed: "You have learned of my duel 
with Shields, and I have now to inform you that 
the dueling business still rages in this city. . . 
Meanwhile the town is in a ferment and a street- 
fight somewhat anticipated." Truly grotesquery, 
like the laugh, is catching, and once started, goes 
thi'ough the whole community. And it is not with- 
out danger to the patient, who at least feels morti- 
fied after having to play the part of universal fool 
before the public. Let Shields, if he wishes, act 
out his Irish bulls and utter them, too, as one may 
hear even in his challenge, which threatens the 
doing of terrible deeds, "which no one will regret 
more than myself." In fact. Shields, in his brilliant 
contradictions and grandiose absurdities, seems an 
incarnate Irish bull on the rampage, always run- 
ning the imminent danger of breaking its neck, yet 
always lighting safely on its feet again. A unique 
and fascinating talent it was, which lured Lincoln 
unconsciously into a kind of competition in gro- 



LINCOLN IN A DUEL. 241 

tesquery, in which he was quite as comic as 
Shields, though in a different way. So great and 
keen was his self-ridicule in the matter that he 
could not bear to have it recalled, according to 
Herndon; apparently he could not stand his own 
inner laugh at his grotesque action. 

But what about the two young ladies who had 
in their frolic given the last stroke toward bringing 
on the duel, even if Lincoln had first set it in mo- 
tion? One may be permitted to guess that they 
were in a tearfully repentant state of mind during 
these days, and made good resolutions to hold in 
check hereafter their dangerous literary gift. Great 
must have been their relief when both the duelists 
retm'ned to Springfield, the one unhurt and the 
other placated. But now rises to the surface a 
new strand of Lincoln's Destiny, hitherto present 
but concealed: Love is seen unfolding fleetly 
out of this affair of Honor. Miss Todd had been 
betrothed to Lincoln, but an estrangement had set 
in, whose clouds had begun slightly to clear away, 
when down upon them drops this duel in which 
both have a part. Unwittingly she had helped to 
get the man whom she loved into what seemed a 
great danger. But now it is past, and the torrent 
of emotion rushes rapidly to its goal . Li a littte 
more than a month after the duel, Abraham Lin- 
coln and Mary Todd were completely reconciled, 
re-engaged, and united in marriage. 



242 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

V. 

Lincoln's Marriage. 

It would seem, then, that Lincoln was in the 
process of being whirled rapidly into matrimony 
through the duel with Shields, which, however, 
was not directly about the young lady at all. 
Women have been a prolific source of duels among 
men; but Lincoln himself did not know that the 
real and lasting prize of the contest was a wife. 
This was the serious and life-long outcome, which 
undoubtedly had other co-operating conditions 
beside the duel. There had been already an en- 
gagement, then a breach, but finally a re-engage- 
ment, followed speedily by a wedding. 

It is recorded that on November 4th, 1842, 
Lincoln was married to Mary Todd, and thus en- 
tered upon a new phase of life, we may say, of in- 
stitutional life. For the Family, that intimate and 
permanent union of one man and one woman, of 
which the supreme end is to preserve and perpet- 
uate humanity itself in an institutional way, opens 
quite another world to its members. It settles 
the individual hitherto drifting, and holds him 
fast to an inner aim, and usually to an outer 
locality. Lincoln noW casts anchor in the sea of 
life and roves no more, though he floats a good 
deal about to the length of his tether. 

In fact, we may well deem his marriage to be 
the conclusion of what we call his Apprenticeship. 



LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE. 243 

He is now thirty-three years old and more ; he has 
been going to school and taking a varied course; 
he has gained no little knowledge of the culture of 
the past, to be sure in a very informal and unac- 
ademic way. He has won his profession, and got- 
ten it well in hand, so that it will give him and 
his a fair living. But the greatest thing which he 
has gotten is to know the People and their speech. 
Indeed, liis whole life up to this time may be 
deemed a communing with the Folk-Soul, and the 
learning how to voice the same. He has become 
able to speak to the People or to make it speak 
to itself through him, to render it aware of its own 
deepest instinct and purpose. 

But if one school lets out, another takes in, 
and the discipline of life goes on. His first Period 
ends in maniiage, home, children; but also his sec- 
ond Period begins, which is to bear him beyond 
his community, beyond his State, to his Nation, 
whose new destiny he is to incorporate with his 
own. But more of this in a later and better con- 
nection; at present we must touch upon the de- 
tails of his nuptials. 

Mary Todd, who becomes so deeply inwoven 
with Lincoln's life as spouse, was born in Lexing- 
ton, chief city of Kentucky's famous Blue Grass 
Region, December 13th, .1818, being thus more 
than nine years younger than Lincoln, and nearly 
24 years old at her marriage. She came of the 
bluest blood of the old Kentucky patriciate, and 



244 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

it is said that branches of her genealogical tree 
could be traced back to the sixth century. She 
was well educated, brilliant in conversation, witty, 
but also gifted with a sharp tongue. She came 
to Springfield in 1839 to live with a married sister, 
and of course was received in the first society, 
which was composed almost wholly of the Ken- 
tucky aristocracy. 

Lincoln became acquainted with her and was 
fascinated by her brilliant qualities. Not only 
that, but we have the right to think that he had 
his secret admiration for that long ancestral 
line which he himself did not possess — he born a 
poor white of the South, yet gifted with unique 
talent and mounting ambition. Note again those 
high-born Kentucky girls whom Lincoln wooed in 
his checkered career of courtship— that certainly 
shows the direction of his look and of his aspira- 
tion. He evidently was going to marry above his 
class, plebeian that he was socially and politically. 
He became engaged to Miss Todd in 1840, though 
her Springfield relatives shook their heads omin- 
ously at the match. ''Not suited to each other by 
birth and education," ran the whisper of the aris- 
tocratic Kentucky women who knew both, and 
who were friendly to jjoth. 

The result was a brolv<.>n engagement, seemingly 
on "that fatal first of January, 1841." The truth 
seems to b(! that neith(>r was marrying for love, 
pure and simple, but with an ulterior end. The 



LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE. 245 

woman is declared to liave been very ambitious, 
and once remarked that she was going to have a 
President for husband. There is httle doubt that 
the native talent of Lincoln was generally recog- 
nized in Springfield at that time; then he was thc^ 
popular young fellow in town. Mary Todtl had 
an insight into his al^ility and character, and 
wedded his possible greatness; and of the two it 
looks as if she came the nearest to having some 
love for its own sake — a streak of the genuine 
article, amid • all the caprices of the spoilt child. 
As far as is known she had never had a serious 
case of love, unless a snapshot of it in her brief 
philandering with Douglas. 

Herein lies a difference, perhaps the basic one, 
between her and Lincoln. With him love had 
bloomed once in all its fullness and glory. Over 
and over again he has left on record what must 
be deemed intimations that Ann Rutledge was 
his only love. The fact was generally known, and 
must have come to the ears of Mary Todd. Her 
own cousin and intimate companion has given 
this account of the matter which seems to us the 
best: Lincoln ''may have doubted whether he 
was responding as fully as a manly, generous na- 
ture should to such affection as he knew my 
cousin (Miss Todd) was ready to bestow upon him. 
And this because it had not the overmastering 
depth of an early love. This everybody here 
knows." 



246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

Such is indeed the pith of the trouble : Lincoln 
had once given his heart away and no longer had 
it to give. That ''overmastering depth of an 
early love" is an allusion to Ann Rutledge, about 
which matter ''everybody here knows." The 
inner collision became so intense in Lincoln that 
he fell sick, mentally sick, and according to his 
Boswell, reached quite the point of insanity. The 
latter's statement, however, is stoutly denied that 
on the first of January, 1841, the wedding was 
set, the bride was ready, the guests were assem- 
bled, but Lincoln failed to appear, having gone 
stark mad. So far probably matters did not pro- 
ceed, but the engagement was broken, and Lincoln 
was plunged into a deep fit of melancholia, which 
threatened to end in suicide. 

The similarity of Lincoln's present mental con- 
dition to that after the death of Ann Rutledge is 
striking. He has had a relapse to his former sor- 
row through his breach with Miss Todd on "the 
fatal first of January, 1841." It is indeed a sep- 
aration which sympathetically brings up that first 
separation through death. In a letter written 
shortly afterwards (January 23rd, 1841), we have 
Lincoln's descrij)tion of himself: "I am now the 
most miserable man living. If what I feel were 
distributed ecjually to the whole human family, 
there would not be onv cheei'ful fate on the 
earth. Whether I shall ever be better, 1 canncn 
tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To reinai.i 



LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE. 247 

as I am is impossible; I must die or be better" 
(Works I., p. 45). This last sentence soimcls like 
a threat of suicide. 

Again that emotional volcano which lay al- 
ways smouldering in Lincoln's nature is having a 
violent eruption. But his former experience has 
taught him to be Fate-compeller over that most 
perilous part of himself — his feelings. And in 
these days the record shows that he went about 
his own business and that of the Legislature, of 
which he was a member. Intense self-suppres- 
sion he must have exercised, and at the end of 
the session he obtains relief by a visit to Kentucky 
with his friend Speed, who there falls in love him- 
self, becomes engaged, and passes through a spell 
of melancholia similar to that of Lincoln. One 
may think that Speed must have caught it from 
his deep sympathy with his suffering friend. At 
any rate Lincoln is called upon to give in turn 
consolation for the mental malady under which he 
himself has been bowed down; in relieving another 
he obtains relief. Suffice it to say that Speed and 
his dark-eyed Fanny were married in February, 
1842, and the husband, fully restored from his 
gloom, declares in a letter to Lincoln that "I am 
far happier than I ever expected to be." Let 
him, therefore, be dismissed from the hospital, 
with that dangerous sympathy of his, all of which 
can now go out in harmless caresses toward his 
wife. But Lincoln has no such vent for his enio- 



248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

tions, and hence we hear of relapses to gloom on 
account of ''the never-absent idea that there 
is one still unhappy whom I have contributed 
to make so. That still kills my soul. I cannot 
but reproach myself for even wishing to be happy 
while she is otherwise." 

In these words (written more than a year after 
the rupture of his engagement) we catch a glimpse 
of the bitter conflict still raging in Lincoln's breast. 
He is aware that he has received a love which he 
cannot requite, that he has roused an emotion for 
which there is in his power no true return. "That 
still kills my soul," and keeps calling up reproaches 
"for even wishing to be happy." Truly he has 
become more conscious than ever, just through 
this experience, that he bears in his heart an im- 
mortal love for another, who has vanished. Still 
after some five years this new attachment crosses 
his path, very different in kind, still an attach- 
ment, which, however, he feels to be relatively a 
terrestrial, mortal affair. What is his duty? In 
the pain of the struggle we have already heard 
him calling himself "the most miserable man 
living." 

Tender-hearted Speed, a genius in sympathy 
who responded so deeply to Lincoln's conflict at 
Springfield, and helped to heal his lacerated spirit 
by consolation, carries the echoes of his friend's 
conflict with him to Kentucky and falls into a 
similar state himself. So Lincoln writes to him: 



LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE. 249 

"I know what the painful point with you is at all 
times when you arc unhappy : it is an apprehen- 
sion that you do not love her (your Fanny) as you 
should." Verily this is Lincoln's own trouble 
which Speed has so often had to soothe with his 
allaying power of sympathy. Now Lincoln's turn 
has come to perform the same priestly office for 
his suffering friend, which he does in another letter 
pointing out ''indubitable evidence of your undy- 
ing affection for her" in the crushing anxiety of 
the lover on account of a little fit of illness she 
had. So Lincoln pronounces liis anxious friend to 
have shown the ultimate test, ''undying affection," 
concerning which the latter had been in a dark 
spell of doubt, which he soon gets over, winding 
up the matter by marriage, as already reported. 

But how about Lincoln? In the same letter he 
gives a brief, quite sulphurous glare of his torment : 
"You know the Hell I have suffered on this point, 
and how tender I am upon it." He too has an 
"undying affection" which has collided evidently 
with his betrothal and broken it, precipitating the 
poor sinner into "the Hell I have suffered." But 
he is seemingly mastering his demonic emotions, 
and slowly asserting himself anew as Fate-com- 
peller. So we rejoice at this gleam of sunshine 
shooting through the clouds in the same letter: 
"I have been quite clear of the hypo since you left, 
even better than I was along in the fall," espe- 
cially so (we may add) since I have been adminis- 



250 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

tering the remedial consolation for my own mal- 
ady to you, my friend, which malady, I imagine, 
I must have imparted to you through your sym- 
pathy. 

So we catch in these two years (1841-2) more of 
the inner soul-life of Lincoln than is visible at any 
other time. Through the preservation of a few 
letters in which he opens his heart both for re- 
ceiving and giving sympathy, we see in brief 
flashes what is going on there. He is working 
through a new and peculiar conflict of Love, hav- 
ing his own soul as the arena for both sides whose 
shock of battle shakes, even if it does not over- 
turn, the throne of reason. But we can also see 
him slowly emerging from the dark chaos of his 
emotional war as Fate-compeller again, in a faint 
crepuscular promise of coming victory. 

But behold! another of those nodal interven- 
tions in the affairs of men which upheave revolu- 
tions and evoke new epochs in life. Down plumps 
the Shields duel upon Lincoln while he is engaged 
in compelling the Fates of Feeling and winning a 
rational mastery of himself. At once there breaks 
up a fresh overbearing swirl of the undercurrents 
of the soul. The duel with all its concomitants 
and echoes in other duels and in manifold reports 
and publications, fills full of excitements the 
months of September-October, 1842, and produces 
an unceasing public din. But the real, though hid- 
den noiseless fact of it for us is that Lincoln, in the 



LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE. 251 

process of dueling, is also in the process of getting 
married . Maiy Todd, having unconsciously gotten 
Lincoln into this dangerous scrape, could not have 
been without a strong access of anxiety and re- 
morse, which had the power of rousing afresh her 
suppressed love, for it seems to be agreed that she 
loved Lincoln and had chosen him against the ad- 
vice of her relatives. This choice of hers Lincoln 
knew, for we have heard him reproach himself for 
having contributed to make one loving human 
heart unhappy: "That still kills my soul." To 
be sure before the duel there had been a partial 
reconciliation, or rather an acceptance on the part 
of both of their separated lot; they had even 
friendly meetings at the house of a common ac- 
quaintance, editor Francis, where the letters 
which gave rise to the challenge of Shields were 
concocted. But we have to think that the duel 
itself, with its attendant emotions breaking over 
all restraints, was what brought about the sudden 
re-engagement, and the ecfually sudden marriage. 
What now of the future of this most important 
step? Not much need be added; already we have 
given certain prognosticating lines of what is to 
come, in the character of the woman, we hope 
with gentleness, yet with justice. One more trait, 
now to be developed fully in the life of the family, 
has to be given to the picture: she was not lovely 
in her love toward the loved one. A great mis- 
fortune, to our mind, in any woman is it when 



252 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

her very love undoes itself by becoming more ex- 
acting, querulous, sharp-tongued the stronger it is. 
In its very power it seems to turn to a kind of 
hate. Unlovely in her love, or liable to get so — 
such is the supreme fatality in this woman's na- 
ture. Abraham Lincoln is to be tested in the fire 
of that kind of a discipline henceforth to the end 
of his life. 

But how about Lincoln himself in this new rela- 
tion? He brings to it a different sort of allegiance, 
which could hardly help provoking in the woman 
a kind of immortal jealousy as her counterstroke 
to his immortal love for another. This other love 
of his she knew well, in fact, "this everybody here 
knows," as her own cousin and associate declared. 
So Lincoln's heart in his domestic relation was the 
abode of two Loves, not always internally harmo- 
nious — Love as an ever-welling passion and Love 
as a reflective obligation. Love as ideal and Love 
as real; or, we may call them Love the beautiful 
and Love the dutiful. -Both he possessed within 
himself in ever-present activity, often with discord 
enough. Then between the man and wife were 
striking contrasts sufficient under a little tiff to 
set the soul ajar — contrasts in birth, education, 
temperament, physique, even in politics, for Mrs. 
Lincoln is said by Hcrndon to have been decidedly 
pro-slavery in sentiment, the result of her South- 
ern breeding. That certainly would not comport 
with Lincoln's deepest spirit or with his politi- 



LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE. 253 

cal career, or with his supreme world-historical 
task. 

Thus Lincoln has a new Fate-compelling ordeal 
put upon him, life-long, ever-recurring. The 
alternative must have presented itself: Shall I 
requite, paying back like for like, and thus end 
in the divorce coml; or shall I transfigure this 
relation also, elevating it into Love universal? 
There is no doubt that Lincoln fled often from 
his real to his ideal affection as his relief from 
domestic discord, passing through the vale of 
gloom on the way. But he always came out of 
it again into the serene atmosphere of his own 
highest nature, being driven to transcend the bit- 
ter reality. This lesson he had already learned by 
his former terrible experience in the evanishment 
of the first loved one. It was the strange lot of 
Maiy Lincoln to keep ever alive Ann Rutledge in 
the bosom of her husband. She drove him to 
take refuge from her temper and conduct in the 
memory of his ideal woman, who awoke in him 
universal Love. The wife was not a Fate-com- 
peller; she did not make her husband forget in 
her and in her home the lost one, but rather 
forced him to bring back the image of the past 
love in an ever-renewing transfiguration. Cer- 
tainly toward her he had to be always exercising 
his forgiveness, his charity, his tender-heartedness, 
which thus became his habit toward all, his uni- 
versal Love as ever-present character. In this 



254 ABRAHAM LINCOLN — PART FIRST. 

way she has an abiding place in his training, in 
this Apprenticeship, whose varied phases we are 
seeking to grasp. 

Still, before parting from her we must, in jus- 
tice, recall that Lincoln did not bring to her ''the 
over-mastering depth of an early love," he laid 
not on her altar a whole heart's unreserved sacri- 
fice. She was second and remained second, and 
alas ! through her own deed she kept herself sec- 
ond, being unable to transcend the limit which 
her own fatal temper put upon her, unable in her 
woman's way also to transfigure Love. That the 
man on his side did, and won the reward. 

VI. 

Retrospective. 

Truly a stormy courtship Lincon has experienced 
at Springfield — what with Douglas, what with 
Shields, what with the young lady, what with 
himself. But at last he has gotten to port and is 
anchored for life, not without breakers often run- 
ning high into the harbor and dashing the fastened 
vessel around within the length of its rope which 
is often sorely tested. So we have come to the 
end of one considerable cycle of Lincoln's life when 
another begins. Or, we may say that the novel, 
after many ups and downs of the hero, many sun- 
bursts and eclipses of love, has wound up in mar- 
riage, the time-honored conclusion of the ro- 



RETROSPECTIVE. 255 

mance. But behold! if the one novel ends, just in 
that end another begins with its fresh batch of 
problems, adventures, sunlit radiances and hapless 
tears. Truly in this as in so many other cases 
the end is also the beginning. 

Indeed, the career of Lincoln at Springfield, or 
at least this part of it, seems to assume the form 
of the novel as its expression. A novel of Love 
Lincoln has now acted out in many of its details; 
a better novel it is, as we think, and certainly 
more lasting, than any of those old thin fictions 
of Mrs. Lee Hcntz which he used to devour. We 
have often noted that Lincoln delighted in fable 
story, apologue, generally in fictional expression; 
in fact, it was this gift which got him into his 
trouble with Shields, through that bright skit of a 
"Letter from the Lost Townships," of course a 
written fiction, which, however, had the power of 
maid ig itself the pivot of an acted fiction, if the 
name be allowed, of much larger proportions. 
Thus Lincoln's own little novelette of the country 
widow gets dangerously complicated with his big 
flesh-and-blood novel at Springfield, of which he 
is the unwilling hero, both in its comic and its 
serious parts, for it must have both if he is the 
central figure. A novelistic form, then, Lincoln's 
career takes at this period, moving into it and 
with it naturally, altogether spontaneously, as if 
it were the native garment of the man's soul-life 
just now. 

Veiy different was the idyl of New Salem from 



256 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART FIRST. 

this novel of Springfield. The locality, the social 
environment, gives the artistic atmosphere in 
which the individual is placed and acts his part. 
Lincoln, the central character whom we are fol- 
lowing and seeking to utter, passes from one to 
the other internally as well as externally. The 
idyllic life of New Salem he experiences to the 
full and then quits, has to quit, and to move on 
into the novelistic life of Springfield with its far 
more highly developed society. From tliis point 
of view we may conceive him as passing through 
a line of literary forms with their corresponding 
contents of living experience. Hardly can we 
Homerize Springfield as we did New Salem; it will 
not let us, being in a different social stage and 
demanding a different utterance of itself. Yet 
each has its hero, yea, the same hero; each its 
conflict of love, each, too, a certain grotesque 
coloring, even in the tragedy of it. But enough! 
the idyl has ended, and the novel has ended, at 
least in this part. 

And still further, Lincoln's Apprenticeship has 
ended, or what we regard as such in this bio- 
graphic exposition. In the main he has been 
going to school to the Folk-Soul of the North- 
West, whose speech, whose ways of thinking, in 
general, whose spirit he has come to know; we 
may add, whose deepest unconscious aspiration 
he has learned to feel, indeed, to forefeel. To be 
sure he will have a time of estrangement from 
the Folk-Soul, whence results a better acquaint- 



I 



RETROSPECTIVE. 257 

ance with it, followed by a new and final recon- 
ciliation. All this lies in the future, and need not 
be further unfolded here. 

Such, in a wide sense, has been Lincoln's edu- 
cation. Could its place have been taken by a 
College or University? The question has been 
often discussed whether an academic training 
would have been an advantage or a drawback to 
Lincoln for his work. Professors, College Presi- 
dents and. University Chancelors will naturally 
look at the matter from one side; men of affairs 
will, on the whole, be likely to lean to the other 
side. The pith of the solution must penetrate to 
the nature of academic life with its peculiar dis- 
ciphne. Does it have a tendency to produce a 
separation, and indeed an alienation from the 
popular way of thinking, from full sympathy with 
the Folk-Soul? If the Hall of Learning is in- 
tended to withdraw the individual from his ordi- 
nary social environment and to put him into a 
new and different world, then its method of edu- 
cation is just opposite to that of Lincoln, whose 
Apprenticeship is directly to the People, whom he 
must learn to know to the bottom, and who are, 
therefore, his main course of study. The way he 
took was, doubtless, the best way for training 
him to his task; possibly it was not the only way, 
though this may be questioned. Still it is highly 
probable that ho school would have wrecked Lin- 
coln's career, not even a University. 

17 



part Seconb* 

In general the great fact of this Part Second 
now before us is that Lincohi rises to the Nationj 
particijDatcs in the soul of the Nation, and finally 
becomes the voice of the Nation and its chosen 
leader. He separates from the Single-State to 
which his political career has been hitherto con- 
fined, and moves forward into the United-States 
as a whole, grasping and fornudating its problem. 
From the Follc-Soul not only of Illinois but of the 
Union-born Fr(;e-States of the North-West he has 
(258) 



1 



LINCOLN'S NATIONAL CALL. 259 

next to pass to the Folk-Soul of the total Nation 
and get acquainted with it also, for it is what he 
has ultimately to deal with and to lead into its 
new Order. His Apprenticeship to his own im- 
mediate State and Section he has fairly served 
and it is now to be transcended ; he knows his 
people well and can speak to them in their own 
dialect, and moreover has begun to feel in ad- 
vance, if not to see, the place of the North- 
Western Folk-Soul in the coming evolution of the 
Nation. 

Of course this separation from his own does not 
mean that he leaves them behind ; he is not going 
to quit his State and the free North-West. On 
the contrary he will take them along with him to 
the national Capital and install them in it, or at 
least their deepest principle. Lincoln as their rep- 
resentative will indeed make them over into the 
Nation, but the unique fact of his career is that 
he will make the Nation over into them in its ap- 
proaching transformation. The full development 
of this process belongs to the future of the pres- 
ent biography ; here, however, we may throw out 
a faint glimpse of it beforehand in the statement 
that all the States, free and slave, are to become, 
transcendently through Lincoln, both Union-born 
and free, such as are already the States of the 
North-West, through their very birth. 

The sweep of this Second Part of Lincoln's life 
we put under the rubric of his National Call, or 



260 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Vocation, which deserves a word of explanation. 
He hears an inner call to go to Washington and 
there to make himself national, after having served 
his time in the Legislature of his State. Such a 
man the Nation also calls, for it needs him and 
must test him at the Capital. This testing Lin- 
coln undergoes with results hereafter to be told. 
But the deepest . fact of his National Call is that 
he becomes the Nation's voice and calls it to the 
supreme world-historical task of the Age. Already 
in the debate with Douglas he has risen to be na- 
tional and utters the great impending duty. Fi- 
nally the Nation calls him to be its leader in the 
crisis of its existence and elects him its President. 
Therewith enters a new period of his life. 

Lincoln thus rises in the present Period out of 
the State to the Nation ; but when he gets to the 
head of the political organism he has a great 
fresh experience. The United-States he finds, if 
not quite disunited, yet deeply rifted and going 
toward disunion. Reaching the Capital at Wash- 
ington, he realizes that this Nation is double and 
separative — a fact which he knew from a distance 
at Springfield, but which he there did not and 
could not realize. Slave-States and Free-States 
are the two contradictory elements composing this 
Union — the oil and water of our political compo- 
sition. Moreover in number the two kinds of 
States are about equal, and seek to remain equal 
as regards the admission of new States. Thus a 



LINCOLN'S NATIONAL CALL. 261 

line of division runs through the Union from East 
to West, and insists strongly upon continuing 
itself to the Pacific in the new territory won by 
the Mexican War. 

At this point the time's searching struggle 
probes down to the deepest fact of the Federal 
Union, namely, that it is productive of new States 
and thus perpetually self-creative. Hitherto it has 
produced both Slave-States and Free-States, 
double births of black and white. Shall this two- 
fold and contradictory generation go on? That is 
really the national problem into which Lincoln 
plumps down when he alights in Washington as 
representative. The South is saying that the 
Double Nation in its pivotal function as State- 
producing is not to be changed, else the Slave- 
States will dissolve the Union and go ahead alone. 
The two sections are bickering over the new lands 
gotten from Mexico; which kind of States shall 
they be when they enter the Union? Shall 
the Union be Slave-State producing, or Free-State 
producing, or both? It is evident that the prob- 
lem reaches down to a transformation of the Union 
from its hitherto dualistic character. 

Moreover this is just the problem which Lincoln 
is to work over and settle within himself during 
the present Period of his life. In general, we 
have already seen his theoretic opposition to sla- 
very, notably in his legislative Protest of 1837. 
But the subject has now become overwhelmingly 



262 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

practical, and Lincoln in Congress begins to deal 
with it as the fundamental question of the Nation. 
He there takes his stand that the Federal 
Union should be productive of Free-States. Such 
is the meaning of his many votes for the Wilmot 
Proviso. This we may deem the political instinct 
which he bears out of the Free-States of the 
North-West. In their case and in their case alone 
the Union has been Free-State producing, and 
this their birth-mark Lincoln carries with him to 
Washington impressed on his own soul. And we 
may add, this is what he is to nationalize in his 
career; chiefly through him is the Nation to be- 
come Free-State producing only, and thus to wipe 
out its ever-conflicting dualism. 

Let us note, then, the striking difference at the 
present time between the North-West and the Na- 
tion as a whole. The one is united, composed 
of free homeogeneous States born of the Union; 
but the other is divided, double, composed of 
heterogeneous States, free and slave. The ideal 
United-States, which is to go forth and make 
itself real, transforming the old Union into its 
image, lies in the North-West, and Lincoln is its 
typical man or hero, who chiefly works the grand 
transformation. 

But not yet ; he is to pass through his prepara- 
tory discipline. He first becomes as dualistic as 
the Nation, in becoming national; if he votes for 
the Wilmot Proviso, he also votes for a party 



r 



LINCOLN'S NATIONAL CALL. 263 

which ignores it, and against a party which recog- 
nizes it. In consequence of such a scission in 
thought and conduct, he passes into a peculiar 
eclipse and time of subsidence, till he emerges at 
the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Then 
he ascends into a new epoch in which he becomes 
the voice of the Age, proclaiming that this Nation 
shall henceforth produce only Free-States. Such 
is his Message to his People, in which he, national- 
izing himself anew, rises into the realm of the 
World's History. 

Accordingly Lincoln, mounting to the Nation, 
finds it to be double, and this doubleness he ac- 
cepts throughout what we call his Second Period. 
He realizes that it was born double, and that it 
was established double in the Constitution, which 
he does not propose to overthrow or even to alter. 
Still he has different attitudes toward this fact 
during the present Period — three main attitudes, 
as we see them. First he becomes aware of the 
national dualism through his Congressional career, 
and appropriates it, making it, so to speak, his 
own dualism as a national man. So he accepts 
through compromise the Federal Union not only 
as actually double but as creatively double, 
though with a deep inner protest, which ham- 
strings him politically and for a time drives out of 
politics into an eclipse. Finally, at the Repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise, he takes his third atti- 
tude toward th(> Double Nation, that it, though 



264 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

it be double, both slave and free, must produce 
singly, begetting hereafter only Free-States. Dur- 
ing these eighteen years (his Second Period), he 
will show an evolution through the foregoing three 
different stages or attitudes. 

Moreover, he attains during this Period his 
pivotal conviction that the Double Nation cannot 
continue such, but must move out of its dualism 
into unity. A famous saying of his runs: "It will 
become all one thing, or all the other," all slave, 
or all free. The half-and-half time is drawing to 
a close: "This Nation cannot endure half-slave 
and half-free." Still v/e are to consider that Lin- 
coln during this entire Second Period accepts the 
Double Nation as intrenched in Law and Consti- 
tution. He holds, however, that that its genera- 
tive power as State-creating can be made single 
constitutionally, and the increase of Slave-States 
thus be stopped. But he does not intend to touch 
the already existent Slave-States. So, between 
his conviction and his action there is a gap st'll ; 
though he believes that this Nation cannot con- 
tinue half-and-half, he is unable now to help it, 
during the present Period. But the World-Spirit 
has for once gotten in a hurry, and soon whirls 
Lincoln, its supreme protagonist, at first against his 
will, into a conflict in which he will reahzc to the 
full his prophetic maxim that this Nation must be- 
come all one thing or all the other. And he finally 
succeeds in making it all one thing — all Free-States. 



LINCOLN'S NATIONAL CALL. 265 

Looking back again to the previous Part, to 
the Apprenticeship, we see that it is preparatory, 
putting its main stress upon the How, while the 
present Part is to emphasize the What. Having 
fairly learned how to reach the Folk-Soul, Lincoln 
must next tell it what it has to do. ' To be sure 
it already feels the message of the time, but it 
must be made conscious of it, and accept it as its 
own. Instinctively it bears the impress of the 
Age, of the World-Spirit, but that dumb instinct 
must be elevated into clear knowledge through 
the voice of the mediating orator, who speaks to 
the People the behest of Civilization. Such an 
epochal Talker Lincoln is to become in the present 
Period, especially toward the last of it in his de- 
bate with Douglas. His call is to the Nation that 
it put itself in line with Universal History, obey- 
ing the injunction of the World-Spirit. So he 
makes the People aware of its true vocation; in- 
deed, the People becomes self-aware through the 
voice of its Great Man, who tells to it its own 
deepest purpose and aspiration, even if previously 
quite unconscious of the same. 

Into the national vortex of struggle Lincoln is 
to be drawn and whirled around during the pres- 
ent Period, discovering in his experience the piv- 
otal difference between his own State along with 
the North-West and the United States as a whole. 
Accordingly the reader is now to make a vicarious 
pilgrimage of evolution through the Period of the 



266 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

dual Lincoln and the dual Nation. At the same 
time he must not neglect to observe that each is 
moving toward unity through the other — the man 
through the Nation and the Nation through the 
man. Each overcomes its dualism through the 
other; the leader is primordially inspired by the 
Folk-Soul to a new Union, and then he leads the 
Folk-Soul to make that Union institutional, 
whereby he gives to it an enduring reality. 

And in this preparatory outlook let us not fail 
to direct the eye upon that other great political 
character, complementary to Lincoln, yet anti- 
thetic physically and spiritually. Somehow they 
cannot be wholly sundered in that ultimate view 
which rises to imivcrsality. Opposites they do in- 
deed remain, but still they are halves of a larger 
whole, and unfold with each other in a kind of 
symmetrical contradiction. Accompanying Lin- 
coln as the shadow of his other Self, or his op- 
posing genius, and circling with him through this 
entire Period to its last point of time, moves his 
antitype Douglas, as if both belonged together 
like the obverse and reverse sides or incarnations 
of one greater spirit — greater than either and em- 
bracing both. The representative counterparts of 
the one supreme movement of the Nation, they 
seem inseparably twinned, yet diametrically polar- 
ized. Very deep runs the synthesis in these two 
antitheses. To the eye of History, Lincoln cannot 
do without Douglas, nor can Douglas do without 



LINCOLN'S NATIONAL CALL. 267 

Lincoln. It is really Douglas who, all unconscious, 
gives to Lincoln his supreme opportunity to be- 
come national, yea, world-historical through the 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and it is 
really Lhicoln who, all unconscious, gives to 
Douglas his supreme opportunity to do his great- 
est national deed in support of Union and Con- 
stitution. Joined in a bond of reciprocal opposi- 
tion, each circles his orbit in the one vaster pro- 
cess of the Nation till they both at last come to- 
gether and interlock in their single basic love of 
country. 

So we can well title Lincoln and Douglas after 
an antique conception the Dioscuri of this pres- 
ent Period, the twin sons of Zeus the Highest, 
though born of a mortal mother; not indeed are 
they divinely twinned from birth in an immortal 
love, like those old fabled twins of the God, but 
they live mutually repellent and oppugnant in 
character and even in stature — not sympathetic 
brothers in joint heroic toils but deeply antipa- 
thetic in strifeful combats. And yet these mutu- 
ally battling Dioscuri of the Prairie, begotten 
spiritually of the same supernal parent, had far 
down in their hearts an undying common love 
of their parental land and of its chief institution, 
the Union. That love, tested by fire, will at last 
reveal itself as deeper and stronger than their 
hostility and fuse them together in one supreme 
purpose. 



268 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

It may be here added that in the organization 
of the present biography of Lincohi, we shall be- 
hold these coming eighteen years (liis Second 
Period) falling naturally into three sexennial por- 
tions or Epochs, each of which has its own mean- 
ing and process, as well as its function in his total 
life. To each, therefore, a chapter will be sep- 
[.rately marked off and assigned. 



CHAPTER FIRST. 

Ifrom State to IRatlon. 

Lincoln is, therefore, to be nationalized, passing 
from the Capital at Springfield to the Capital at 
Washington, rising from the Single-State to the 
United-States. It is an experience which practic- 
ally renders him national; he as Representative 
has to make laws for the whole Nation. He has 
to move out of the bounds of his special locahty 
and hold in view the entire country. Already he 
has been legislator for one State, now he is to be 
legislator for all the States. Thus he is brought 
into direct contact with the national problem of 
the time and gets acquainted with the men who 
are working at it from various points of view and 
from different parts of the land. 

lUinois is a product of the Union as State-maker, 
in and through which Union Illinois as State par- 
ticipates in the making of new States. Now the 
pivotal question of the time is going to turn upon 
this national act of State-making, or the produc- 
tion of new States out of acquired territories. Ill- 
inois by herself cannot produce a new State, only 
the Union can, to whose genetic power she, how- 
ever, contributes through her Congressional repre- 
sentatives. Abraham Lincoln as a member of the 
Lower House from Illinois will have considerable 

(269) 



270 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

experience with this matter of the creation of new 
States out of the territorial domain of the Union. 
In fact it is to be seen that he now strikes the fun- 
damental and enduring key note of his political 
career: the Union as State-producing must pro- 
duce only Free-States. 

Lincoln, however, does not at once sweep for- , 
ward to his prize. He has to make three trials 
for his party's nomination, but on the third trial 
he wins and is elected. He serves only one term 
when he retires, and his Congressional period 
comes to an end never to be resumed. He will 
indeed return to Washington a dozen years after- 
ward, but as President. In 1849 when he quits 
Congress and goes back home to his State and its 
Capital, he has passed through a distinct epoch of 
his life, during which his chief ambition has been 
to make himself national. But he is remanded 
to his starting-point and seemingly has to begin 
over again. 

Some six or seven years (1842-1849) we put into 
this epocli, which rounds out wuthin itself one 
phase of Lincoln's experience. It is a curious fact 
that tliu'ing these same years Douglas is traveling the 
same road to the Capital, he also is nationalizing 
himself by moving from the State to the Nation. 
But Douglas far outruns Lincoln in the race, hav- 
ing become Representative and finally Senator in 
just the foregoing stretch of time. When Lincoln 
enters the Lower House, Douglas enters the Upper. 



HOPE DEFERRED. 27 1 

Indeed Lincoln seems to be turned back, while 
Douglas seems to be pushing onward. Both are 
moving, each in his own orbit, toward a common 
goal, the highest gift of the American People; 
which will gain it? 

At present Lincoln is to be seen becoming na- 
tional; thus he gets aware of the Nation as dual 
and falls into the dualism himself. He will try to 
take up both sides, but really drops into their 
contradiction. Li this way the national rift of 
the time finds its reflection in his career and also 
in his soul. 

So Lincoln, having advanced from State to Na- 
tion, is, at the end of his Congressional term, 
whirled back from Nation to State. Thus we ob- 
serve a little cycle of life rounded out into a kind 
of completeness. But he returns to his starting- 
point a very different man; now he has the na- 
tional dualism in his soul which becomes the silent 
and quite unseen arena of the two conflicting 
sides till the time brings his liberation. But first 
we must follow his slow ascent to the national 
fountain-head^the tedious struggle of a full sex- 
ennium. 

I. 

Hope Deferred. 

Lincoln, having served four terms in the Illinois 
Legislature, deemed that he had done his duty to 
his State. He refused re-election, and set about 



272 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

taking the next important step in the Hne of pro- 
motion. He did not wish to be Governor, though 
his name was mentioned for the position. He 
must advance out of Ilhnois to the national 
center. His ambition was to be Congressman, and 
in 1842 he opened his canvas. The Springfield 
district was composed of a number of counties, 
and there was no lack of able candidates. Lin- 
coln was not successful, indeed he had to take a 
double dose of defeat. Not only did he not get 
the nomination of his own party, but he was 
beaten in his own County of Sangamon by Edwin 
D. Baker, who fell at Ball's Bluff in the Civil 
War. Still Baker did not get the nomination, but 
the prize came to John J. Hardin, who perished at 
the battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican War. 
Lincoln, however, was one of the delegates of San- 
gamon to the nominating convention, with in- 
structions to support Baker, so that he compared 
himself to ''a fellow who is made groomsman to a 
man that has cut him out, and is marrying his 
own dear gal." 

The most interesting point in connection with 
this candidacy is Lincoln's view of the social and 
religious influences which swamped him in Sanga- 
mon. He was defamed as an aristocrat, an in- 
fidel, and a duelist. In a letter which gives the 
reasons why ''the people of Sangamon have cast 
me ofif," he declares: "It would astonish if 
not amuse the older citizens to learn that I 



HOPE DEFERRED. 273 

(a strange, friendless, uneducated boy working on 
a flat-boat at ten dollars a month) have been put 
down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and 
aristocratic family distinction." Already we have 
noted that Lincoln on going to Springfield asso- 
ciated chiefly with the Kentucky patriciate; here 
is a political echo of it, quite to his surprise. 
Still his old friends of New Salem and the Clary 
Grove boys clung to him, even if he 'had married 
into the aristocracy. This, by the way, was the 
year of his marriage. Lincoln speculates curiously 
upon "the strangest combination of church influ- 
ence against me. Baker is a Campbellite and 
therefore, as I suppose with few exceptions, got 
all that church." So Lincoln seeks to fathom 
why ''the people of Sangamon have cast me off," 
evidently a stunning blow to him, or several of 
them, which seem to have beaten down upon him 
from different unsuspected directions. Religion 
appears to have largely entered the contest, since 
"it was everywhere contended that no Christian 
ought to go for me, because I belonged to no 
church, was suspected of being a deist, and had 
talked about fighting a duel." That was indeed 
the bitter pill in the whole transaction: the de- 
fection of his own home to his interest. 

The result is, that Lincoln has to wait a while 
before he can make that much-desired journey to 
the centre of the Nation. And to tell the truth 
he can afford the delay, smce the time has no very 

18 



274 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

important issue, certainly not Lincoln's great 
issue. 

In 1842, the question of slavery extension 
was quiescent, and Tyler's administration had no 
hold upon any party or upon the people. But in 
1844 the proposed annexation of Texas roused a 
new political interest, which culminated in the de- 
feat of Henry Clay for President, of whom Lincoln 
had become an ardent supporter and admirer. 

Lincoln was a lukewarm opponent of annexa- 
tion; for that matter. Clay was too, and in his fa- 
mous letters during the campaign of 1844, shifted 
from side to side. Lincoln declared: 'T perhaps 
ought to say that individually I never was much 
interested in the Texas question. I never could 
see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch 
as they were already a free republican people on 
our own model. On the other hand, I never could 
very clearly see how the annexation would aug- 
ment the evil of slavery. It always seemed to 
me that slaves would be taken there in about 
equal numbers with or without annexation." Lin- 
coln holds that the addition of Texas, which, as an 
independent Republic, was already a Slave-State, 
would not increase the influence of slavery. On 
this point he differed widely from the strong anti- 
slavery men of the North, who maintained with 
truth that the annexation of Texas added much to 
the political power of slavery in the Union. Al- 
ready we see the race between North and South 



HOPE DEFERRED. 275 

for the winning of new States, which meant the 
supremacy of one section over the other, or at 
least their equihbrium. 

The popular sentiment as a whole, even in the 
North, favored the acquisition of Texas. If the 
American Union is to be productive of States as its 
supreme function, then it must have territory on 
which it can realize its own highest nature. The 
claim of Mexico to Texas was that of might 
greater than Spain, the previous claim of Spain 
was that of might greater than the Indians, who 
in turn were invaders, having driven out antece- 
dent inhabitants. Bands of Americans had gone 
into Texas and wrenched the country from Mexico, 
and, moreover, had founded a State after the 
American pattern, which had asserted for years its 
right of existence. Annexation touched profoundly 
a responsive chord in the American Folk-Soid, 
which felt in it the State-creating act. Both Lin- 
coln and Clay responded to the same feeling, in 
spite of their opposition. 

To be sure there was a note of discord in this 
matter, inasmuch as the new State was to be a 
Slave-State. A party had already risen in the 
North which was determined that the Union 
should produce no more Slave States. At this 
point Lincoln's opposition comes in, and he gets 
his persistent theme: slavery must be kept out of 
the territories. The Union must indeed be State- 
producing, but must produce Free-States only. 



276 ABRAHAM LINCOLN-PART SECOND. . 

The Nation might be united upon the acquisition 
of territory, but it would certainly be deeply 
divided if such territory were handed over to 
slavery. 

11. 

The Mexican War. 
During the last days of December, 1846, Con- 
gress admitted Texas as a Slave-State. Previously 
it had been an independent government with its 
own law and constitution, and the question has 
been often propounded, Did the United States 
annex Texas, or Texas the United States? Prac- 
tically, however, Texas was a product of the 
American Union; Americans had settled it as a 
territory, wrenched it from Mexico, and organized 
it as a State after the American pattern. ^ Its 
anomaly was that the hardy pioneers had seized 
upon a land not belonging to the Federal Union, 
and had shown their State-making capacity in an 
entirely independent fashion, without the super- 
vision of the central government. Thus the story 
of Texas has a peculiar character different from 
that of any other State; in this regard it remains 
a Lone Star in the Union. 

As was expected, the act of the United States 
produced war with Mexico. General Zachary 
Taylor was ordered to the Rio Grande where he 
took up a position opposite to Matamoras. On 
May 8th, 1846, was fought the battle of Palo 



THE MEXICAN WAR. 277 

Alto, and the next clay that of Resaca de la 
Palma, both of them American victories which 
thrilled the country and overbore opposition to 
the War, except in New England. Taylor's victo- 
rious career continued, culminating in the battle 
of Buena Vista (February 23d, 1847), in which he 
defeated a Mexican force under Santa Anna four 
or five times larger than his own. He became 
at once a popular hero, and was soon put in 
line for the Presidency by the Whig party, which 
on the whole had opposed the war, but soon got 
ready to reap its political fruits, even through its 
own self-negation. 

Quite as successful was the campaign of General 
Scott terminating in the capture of the City of 
Mexico (September 14th, 1847), after which he 
was soon displaced by the Democratic administra- 
tion, doubtless out of jealousy of the Whig com- 
mander. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was 
signed February 2nd, 1848, by which Mexico ac- 
cepted the Rio Grande as boundary, and ceded 
Upper Cahfornia, which embraced a large territory 
equivalent to more than ten States of the size of 
Ohio. This new territory was again to be the 
apple of discord between the Slave-States and the 
Free-States. Already in 1846 the possibility of 
acquisition of territory from Mexico had called 
forth the Wilmot proviso, "that neither slavery 
nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist therein. ' ' 
This little sentence becomes for many years the 



278 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

pivot of political discussion between the North 
and South. It is a declaration that the Federal 
Union shall be henceforth productive of Free- 
States only; Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced 
it, but its author is said to have been Brinkerhoff 
of Ohio 

Now in this same year of 1846 Lincoln was 
first elected to Congress. He had been a Clay 
elector for Illinois in 1844, and became a well- 
known campaign orator throughout the State. He 
paid a visit to his former home in Indiana near 
Gentry ville in 1844, where he made a speech to an 
audience composed largely of his old neighbors, 
whom he had quit some fourteen years before. 
The occasion also inspired a batch of verses which 
have been preserved. The memories of his youth 
brought back the old habit of ihyming, which was 
one of his boyish knacks. It seems that he wrote 
four "cantos" of which he sent a couple to a po- 
etical friend nearly two years after the}^ were 
written. The popular ballad was evidently his 
model, and he has a number of pretty poetic fan- 
cies, in spite of some mistakes in grammar and 
some limping measures — certainly not worse than 
his popular prototype. The tone of the two 
printed ballads is sad, and in one of the accompa- 
nying letters is an allusion to his favorite poem, 
usually called "Immortality," of which he says: 
"I am not the author. I would give all I am 
worth and go in debt, to be able to wi-itc >-() fine a 



THE MEXICAN WAR. 279 

piece as I think that is. Neither do I know who 
is the author." Certainly Lincoln must have had 
some poetic ambition, if he would have given so 
much to be the author of this lyric. He goes on : 
"I met it in a straggling form in a newspaper last 
summer (1845) and I remember to have seen it 
once before about fifteen years ago," which would 
throw his first acquaintance with it back to the 
year 1831, when he first arrived at New Salem. 
There is no doubt that the poem became deeply 
interwoven in Lincoln 's soul with the evanishment 
of Ann Rutledge, and was for him the utterance of 
an eternal love, which he seemed to recall and 
breathe in through its pensive strain. 

Worthy of notice is it, therefore, that we now 
catch the most distinct glimpse of Lincoln as seek- 
ing to master creatively another literary form of 
the People. For the ballad at its purest fount 
wells out of the popular heart anonymously, be- 
ing an immediate, spontaneous utterance of the 
Folk-Soul itself, like the true legend, yea, like lan- 
guage also. The name of no individual as author 
is stamped upon the mythology of a people, though 
a great poet like Homer transforms, and indeed 
organizes it, and many later singers and artists 
draw for their use from this primordial well-head 
of the Folk's expression. Significant is it, there- 
fore, to see Lincoln actually balladizing, and turn- 
ing up to the sunlight a now vein harmonious with 
his fabling. For both ballad and fable are twin 



280 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART S CJXD. 

utterances of the Folk-Soul which it is Lincoln's 
supreme literary function to voice, laden, however, 
with the new and far mightier content of the 
Nation and the Age. 

Furthermore, it may be here added that Lincoln 
as fabulist, deals not in the traditional fancies of 
old Greek legend. Quite nothing do we hear 
from his mouth about the classic nymphs of the 
brooks, of the trees, and of the hills; nor could he 
make the Olympian Gods grind in his literary 
Pantheon ; the whole Greek mythical world was 
alien to him, though he must have been running 
his nose perpetually against it in his reading of 
poetiy and oratory. What is more surprising, we 
catch next to nothing of the transmitted stream of 
Teutonic folk-lore in Lincoln's fabling, though in 
this stream he and his ancestral line must have 
been dipped for untold generations. One might 
think that the neighboring forest with which Lin- 
coln lived in sympathetic communion during his 
entire youth, would have started in him, or at 
least re-vivified the old Germanic folk-tale, such 
as we see in Grimm, with its fairies, elves, witches, 
and magic spells. Little or nothing of the sort do 
we find in Lincoln's stories; the supernatural 
Powers of the European Mythus he seems to turn 
from, in spite of a native tendency to foreboding 
and even to superstition, as he confesses. His 
fabling rests upon the new consciousness of the 
American backwoodsman, who recognizes no im- 



THE MEXICAN WAR. 281 

passable line between himself and the forest, for 
he cuts it down and converts it into his own home. 
Moreover, he, as freeman, determines the institu- 
tional world which determines him, makes the law 
which he obeys, and thus is truly self-determined. 
Hence he introduces no mighty monarch or beau- 
tiful princess coming from fairyland or from a far- 
off outside realm, to give him golden gifts which 
are properly his own, or to bring to him that jus- 
tice which he is to bring to himself, of course 
through his own self-created institutions. So it 
befalls that Lincoln having to appeal to the Folk- 
Soul in its own speech, suggests by the way a new 
folk-lore, though this of course is not elaborated, 
and he is largely unconscious of his own pro- 
cedure. His fabling, if true to his environing re- 
ality, cannot be of nature determining man 
through its play of mythical forms, such as we 
behold in European story, but of man determin- 
ing nature by his axe and plow, and in general by 
his mind, for that is the fact before him, and even 
this fact rests upon a still deeper foundation, 
namely, that of a free institutional world. 

Accordingly Lincoln's story-telling, especially in 
the form which it takes, reaches down to a very 
deep layer of American consciousness and of his 
own. Folk-lore, transmitted by the poet, sage, 
fabulist from generation to generation, is the first 
teacher of the People. Moreover, it is in a condi- 
tion of continual transformation, for it must be 



282 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

wrought over again and again to image the ever- 
changing, social evolution of the Folk-Soul. Pro- 
foundly significant of the new institutional order 
in America is the fact that Lincoln, as fabulist 
to his People, eschewed the shapes of external au- 
thority, which are the dominating powers of the 
European Mythus, ancient and modern, Northern 
and Southern. 

All this seems far enough away from the Mexi- 
can War with which we started. But we should 
never forget the iDubbling fountain of fable 
which Lincoln carried around in his heart, cjuite 
ready to send forth a little jet of itself if rightly 
touched, and which gushed up spontaneously from 
the deepest depths of his being. 

III. 

Lincoln as Congressnnan. 

The Democratic opponent of Lincoln in his race 
for Congress was a famous Methodist preacher, 
Peter Cartwright, who, born in Tennessee, had 
moved as a young man from Kentucky to Illinois, 
in order to live in a Free-State. Thus he be- 
longed, like Lincoln, to that great migration from 
the South into the North-West, for the purpose of 
getting away from slavery. A certain rude, mag- 
netic power Ijiy in the man, which produced as- 
tonishing effects at the revivals and camp-meet- 
ings of the backwoodsmen. Cartwright seems to 



LIXCOLX AS COXGRESSMAN. 283 

have made religion the chief issue with Lincoln, 
who was again held up as an infidel, as a duelist, 
and as an aristocrat. His superior fitness for the 
position, however, was so apparent that he A'as 
elected by a large majority. 

Lincoln has now climbed to a very important 
rung in the ladder of his ambition ; he is at last to 
pass from the State to the Nation, from Spring- 
field to Washington. Still he finds a deep discord 
in his situation; he in common with the Whigs 
opposed the Mexican war, yet he felt compelled to 
urge its vigorous prosecution in a public meeting 
at Springfield. His Whig friends had rushed pell- 
mell into the struggle which to him was of doubt- 
ful right. In the Illinois delegation to Congress 
he was the only Whig. He began to feel out of 
joint with the time, and especially with the people 
of his State. Of this lack of harmony between 
himself and the Folk-Soul we catch a slight echo 
in a letter to his friend Speed: "Being elected to 
Congress, though I am grateful to our friends for 
having done it, has not pleased me as much as I 
expected." He gets in advance a wdiiff of that 
dissonance which he is certain to meet at the Cap- 
ital of the Nation. 

A year had still to pass between his election 
and the time when it was necessary for him to 
start for the national Capital. During that year 
took place the most brilliant victories of the Mex- 
ican War — the battle of Buena Vista and General 



284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Scott's triumphant march from Vera Cruz to the 
city of Mexico. Lincoln looking at that dazzling 
military pageant far off in a Southern land, and 
observing the intoxication of his own people, 
might well have his presentiments in regard to his 
political future. He, in his heart an opponent of 
the war, felt with every victory the inner and 
deepening clash between himself and the Folk- 
Soul, so that he was really no longer its represen- 
tative even in his own district. And as the situa- 
tion already was, he stood forth the solitary Whig 
in Congress from Illinois. No wonder that the 
election "has not pleased me as much as I ex- 
pected." Hitherto the popular heart and his 
heart have had one pulsation together, but now 
they begin to beat differently, yea, antagonistically. 
Still that separation is just what now must take 
place, for through it Lincoln gets to be himself 
within himself, wins his true independent individ- 
uality. After this estrangement he will return tb 
the Folk-Soul, not to be absorbed into it again as 
one of its protoplasmic atoms, but capable of being 
its leader. 

Lincoln set out for Washington in November, 
1847. Thirteen years and some months later he 
will again take his departure from Springfield for 
the Capital of the Nation under very different cir- 
cumstances. That rift which is already beginning 
and which he feels, is to widen into open disunion 
and war. Li the boarding club, "Mrs. Spriggs's 



LINCOLN AS CONGRESSMAN. 285 

mess," where Lincoln lived while at Washington, 
was Joshua Giddings of Ohio, the rankest aboli- 
tionist in Congress, and also some southern mem- 
bers. Fiery disputation over the slavery question 
sprang up which, it is said, Lincoln would calm 
and turn into a laugh by one of his funny stories. 
Still at the dinner-table he had to witness the 
bitter controversy of the time, in which he could 
not help participating. The separation in his own 
party also he must have felt, since Robert Toombs 
and Alexander H. Stephens, both of them ardent 
pro-slavery members from Georgia, were Whig 
leaders, very hostile to the Wilmot proviso, for 
which Lincoln repeatedly gave his vote. What 
could better call up in his soul the great national 
dualism of which he was to get the full experience 
at the Capital? 

At this session of the House the Whigs had a 
slight majority, enough to elect Robert C. Win- 
throp as speaker, who was able to unite both 
wings, Southern and Northern, On the whole the 
Whig party was opposed to the Mexican War, but 
its majority had to vote supplies for the army, 
always with a kind of protest. There is no doubt 
that Lincoln braced up to greater opposition at 
Washington than at Springfield. In fact it is de- 
clared that he had resolved in Illinois to say as 
little as possible about the war during his Con- 
gressional career. He knew that the people of his 
State strongly favored it — a fact ever present to 



286 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

him as the solitary Whig Representative of Illinois. 
But when he found that his party had the ma- 
jority in the House, he changed, he began to take 
the color of his environment. He voted for the 
resolution of Ashmun of Massachusetts that the 
war had been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally 
begun by the President. This was a slap in the 
face of his constituency, and brought a protest 
even from his partner and friend, Herndon, who 
declared to him frankly that he was committing 
political suicide and destroying his own party. 
But Lincoln did not stop with voting for another 
member's resolutions; he drew up and offered a 
set of his own December 22, 1847. These have 
been nicknamed the "Spot Resolutions," since 
they call upon the President, Democratic Polk, to 
describe "the particular spot on which the blood 
of our citizens was shed," repeating the word 
"spot" three times with a special emphasis. The 
implication was that the President and not Mexico 
was the aggressor, and that the war was unjust. 

There is no doubt that in these transactions Lin- 
coln has broken with the Folk-Soul of his State, 
and in fact of the North-West. The acquisition 
of territory for the creation of new States was felt 
to be a necessity by the People. The claim of 
Mexico and of Spain before her was weak, and 
could not stand against the right of the settlers 
who had conquered the territory. Lincoln has set 
himself indirectly against the State-making in- 



LINCOLN AS CONGRESSMAN. 287 

stinct of the American Folk-Soul, and is certain 
to get the backstroke of his act. When he left 
Springfield, there had been already talk of his re- 
nomination, but after his first session in Congress 
no such outlook was mentioned. 

Secretly underneath Lincoln's opposition lay the 
fact that the new territorial acquisitions were to 
be made into Slave-States. At present, however, 
his hostility runs counter to any possession of the 
lands bounded by the Rio Grande. Such a Hmi- 
tation was felt to be a suppression of the national 
spirit, which the People were certain to resent. 
Clearly Lincoln's Congressional action in the Con- 
gress of 1847-8 has whelmed him into a deep con- 
flict with his own constituency. The discord, 
however, belongs to the time, to the party, to the 
Nation, and will never cease till slavery itself be 
abolished. 

In his new position Lincoln did not let his su- 
preme gift of story-telling rust from disuse. Says 
a listener: "By New Year's (1848) he was recog- 
nized as the champion story-teller of the Capitol," 
He would tilt back his chair, stretch out his long 
legs (it is not reported that he "cocked them up" 
in Washington as he did in New Salem), and open 
with his ever-recurring prelude, "That reminds 
me" of something that occurred down in Egypt 
(Southern Illinois) or during the Black Hawk War. 
This picture of him at the table has also been 
handed down: "When about to tell an anecdote 



288 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

during a meal, he would lay down his knife and 
fork, place his elbows on the table, rest his face 
between his hands" and strike up his unfailing 
overture, "That reminds me." It is also said that 
"he never told a story twice," but seemed to have 
an inexhaustible stock laid up in due order and 
ready to go off at the least touch. The bowling 
alley was also a favorite place of his, and would 
attract a crowd of men to see him and hear him; 
he was a very awkward bowler, and could easily 
push this awkwardness to the point of bodily gro- 
tesquery, accompanied with a fitting joke or story, 
"some of which were very broad." 

But underneath all this extravagant humor, 
which at times reached the point of buffoonry, the 
conflict of the age was entering Lincoln's soul and 
cleaving it into two contradictory parts, which 
imaged the nation, and which he had to harmon- 
ize within, ere he could restore them to unity 
without. , 

IV. 

The Campaign of 1848. 

During Lincoln's first Congressional term there 
was a good deal of President-making. Candidates 
were to be nominated, and the question buzzed in 
Washington, particularly about the halls of the 
Capitol, Who is the coming man? With the 
Whigs, their great leaders and orators, Clay and 
Webster, were clearly impossibilities. The Mcxi- 



THE CAMPAIGN OF I84S. 289 

can War had thrown them out of harmony with 
the People as a whole. Moreover, the Whig party 
had opposed the war, but could ride into office 
only on the wave of the war's popularity. Under 
such circumstances it soon began to be perceived 
that General Zachary Taylor was the most avail- 
able candidate in the field. He was the popular 
hero of the triumph over Mexico, and one of the 
ardent advocates for his nomination instead of 
Clay, who had sulked during the war, was our 
Abraham Lincoln, who had denounced it as unjust 
and unconstitutional. 

June 7th, 1848, the Whig Convention assembled 
at Philadelphia, and on the fourth ballot the hero of 
Buena Vista was nominated. There was no plat- 
form, no declaration of principles; an attempt to 
introduce the Wilmot Proviso in regard to the 
new territories was not allowed to come to a vote. 
The burning question of the time was smothered 
without giving forth a single spark. Never did a 
political party so completely stultify itself. The 
Whiggory of Taylor was very dubious, but that 
made no difference; Whiggery itself was dubious, 
particularly dubious of itself. He was not bound 
by any platform. Anyhow, the party was going 
to vote for the hero of a war whose injustice and 
unconstitutionality it had often, and even passion- 
ately, affirmed. The victory of such a party 
means its death ; it votes for its own negation. 

The interest for us at present is that Lincoln, 

19 



290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

through his ardent support of the Whig party in 
its nomination of Taylor, gets embroiled in all its 
contradictions, and begins to explain them away 
for himself and for others. He makes a speech in 
the House of Representatives (July 27th, 1848, see 
Works, I., p. 135), which gives a very significant 
picture of the Lincoln of that pivotal moment. 
He had voted more than forty times for the Wil- 
mot Proviso ; it was really the cardinal doctrine of 
his political faith, and bore in itself the basic prin- 
ciple of his whole future career. Why should it, 
above all things, be suppressed by his party? And 
a candidate chosen whose opinion about it is at 
least unknown? But let us hear Lincoln himself: 
"I admit I do not certainly know what he (Taylor) 
would do on the Wilmot Proviso. I am a North- 
ern man, or rather a Western Free-State man, 
with a constituency I believe to be, and with per- 
sonal feelings I know to be, against the extension 
of slavery. As such, and with what information I 
have, I hope and believe that General Taylor, if 
elected, would not veto the Proviso. But I do 
not know it. But if I knew he would, I still 
would vote for him," not only against Cass but 
against Van Buren, the nominee of the Free- 
Soilers, whose platform strongly affirms the princi- 
ple of the Proviso. There is no doubt that Lincoln 
felt the inner dissonance of his position. Through 
the labored ex})lanations of his speech runs an un- 
dercurrent of his soul's protest, which he seeks to 



THE CAMPAIGN OF IS4B. 291 

divert by making fun of Cass. Lincoln has fol- 
lowed his party into the deepest discord with him- 
self, and with his true destiny. He has been 
brought face to face with his party's political sui- 
cide, and his own, too, of which act he seems not 
fully conscious. But it will lay him on the shelf 
for many a long year, till he recovers and wakes 
up a new man. 

In the same speech Lincoln undertakes to allay 
another very real discord: ''As General Taylor is 
the hero of the Mexican war," how can he be 
consistently supported by ''the Whigs who have 
always opposed the war?" It is a troublesome 
matter without question, but Lincoln grapples 
with it, drawing the "distinction between the cause 
of the President, who started the war, and the 
cause of the country after it was begun." But 
now that it is over, the Whigs do not think of 
restitution, but rush headlong to pluck the chief 
fruit of what they branded as injustice and a vio- 
lation of the Constitution. Truly Lincoln has 
been whelmed by his party into a state of inner 
scission and self-contradiction, of which he is as 
yet only partially aware, but upon which he will 
be given time to ruminate a good deal. 

At Washington Lincoln associated with Southern 
Whigs, some of them men of great ability, such 
as Toombs and Stephens of Georgia. Their bent 
was toward slavery extension, in bitter hostility 
to the Wilniot Proviso. Lincoln formed a politi- 



292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

cal club with them and co-operated in hushing 
the anti-slavery protest in the party, really voting 
down his own votes, forty and more, for the Pro- 
viso. We doubt if this gave him much peace of 
mind. Rather did it make him twinge the more 
restlessly at his self-contradictory conduct. 

After the close of the session of Congress, Lin- 
coln goes campaigning Northward, where he gets 
into another atmosphere, and in consequence ex- 
periences another political twist wrenching his 
soul. New England was strongly anti-slavery, 
and mainly Whig, but seemed to be making up its 
mind between Taylor and \^an Buren. At Wor- 
cester Lincoln spoke : he dwelt upon the restriction 
of slavery, and argued that Taylor and the Whigs, 
who were silent upon the subject, were more to 
be trusted than Yan Buren and the Free-Soilers, 
who made the Wilmot Proviso the main plank of 
their platform. Still Lincoln would have hardly 
risked such a speech at Washington before his 
Whig club, composed of Toombs, Stephens, Pres- 
ton, and other Southerners. Again, he could not 
help feeling the dissonance in his conduct, as well 
as in his party and in the Nation. He is begin- 
ning to get conscious of his own double attitude, 
and of the coming struggle so carefully hushed by 
both Whigs and Democrats in 1848. He heard 
Seward speak in Boston, and is reported to have 
said privately: "Governor Seward, I have been 
thinking about what you said in your speech. I 



THE CAMPAIGN OF IS4S. 293 

reckon you are right. We have got to deal with 
this slavery question, and got to give much more 
attention to it hereafter than we have been 
doing." 

Surely the chief issue of the Age cannot be 
silenced, and Lincoln begins to feel his own and 
his party's discordant attitude. From the East 
he goes back to Illinois, where he makes speeches 
for Taylor, who is elected by a handsome ma- 
jority. He returns to his Congressional duties 
and serves out the rest of his term, toned down 
considerably in his activity. One measure he 
seeks to bring about : the abolition of slavery in 
the District of Columbia. In this, however, he 
is foiled at the time and has to wait till he be- 
comes President. On March 4th, 1849, Lincoln's 
Congressional career ends with the inauguration of 
the Whig President. What can he do but go 
home to work over and out of the soul-harassing 
dualism into which he has been precipitated? He 
has indeed made himself national; he has verily 
taken up the Double Nation into himself, but like- 
wise it has taken up him into itself, and trans- 
formed him into its own contradiction, which it, 
too, is to work over and out of in the coming 
years. Both the man and the Nation are thus 
seen to have their problem, similar, yet separate; 
each is to set about its solution apart on diverg- 
ing lines in the next epoch, till finally they will 
come together again under new conditions. 



294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

And now we have reached the point at which 
we are looking about for Lincohi's other Self or 
antitype, the doughty Douglas, who has been at 
Washington during this whole epoch, in the daz- 
zling perihelion of their common orbit, flying ever 
toward the central luminary, while Lincoln has 
been rushing to his remotest aphelion, where he is 
destined to wander long years in a kind of peni- 
tential obscuration. But no despair! he, too, 
will slowly whirl about and sweep Sunward. 

V. 

Lincoln and Douglas (3). 

So we bring before the eye again our national 
Dioscuri, moving together as extremes to each 
other, in a sort of antipodal conjunction. Let not 
this fact of a common basic substrate be forgot- 
ten in their diverse courses, for it must unite them 
at last. But during the present epoch (1842-9) 
their apartness is verily the striking point in their 
comparison. Douglas is at one with the Double 
Nation, whose dualism has so deeply gone into 
Lincoln and rendered him discordant with it and 
himself. Douglas is in tune with the Folk-Soul 
of his State, and has plucked its highest honors; 
but how about our Lincoln? Still both are coun- 
terparts and are seen reaching out from the same 
State to the same goal — the National Capital ; each 
seeks to become lawmaker to the whole Nation. 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (5) 295 

And underneath the ambition of both lurks a still 
greater prize, the greatest of all, the Presidency. 
Each has in his heart the dream of every Ameri- 
can public-man, yea, of every American boy, who 
has in him the possibility of reaching the top of 
the political ladder. Lincoln and Douglas have 
both become national in their activity, having 
risen from the State to the Nation — so much they 
have done in common during this epoch. 

The second striking fact in the comparison of 
their careers at the present time is that Douglas 
has dashed out far in advance of Lincoln. He 
had entered the National House of Representatives 
in 1843, and had been chosen again in 1845. Lin- 
coln had failed both these times to get the nomi- 
nation in the Springfield district for the same posi- 
tion. At last, after two failures, he won the prize 
and went to the opening of Congress in 1847, 
where he saw Douglas taking his leave of the 
Lower House for the Upper. Thus they were not 
brought face to face in their contest, as they had 
been in the Illinois Llouse of Representatives in 
1836. Their lines did not cross, though leading 
in their same general direction; they seem never 
to have associated in Washington, though they 
had long known each other. 

But just behold the Gods pouring down upon 
the head of Douglas their bounties in that co})ious 
year 1847! First of all the Legislature of Illinois 
elects him its Senator, and Lincoln, entering the 



296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Capitol, could behold his younger rival winging 
ever upward, far ahead of him in fam-e and honor. 
Then Douglas was at once appointed Chairman of 
the Senatorial Committee on Territories — really 
the most important chairmanship of Congress. 
In the House he had already held the same posi- 
tion, in which he had made himself the great au- 
thority upon, as well as the Congressional super- 
visor over, the vast area of the North-Western 
territory out of which a dozen new States could 
in time be made. It shows unquestioned insight 
that Douglas seized upon the pivotal function of 
the Union as State-producing for his special 
sphere of activity in the National Legislature, 
since he thus placed himself at the center of the 
Nation's History for the coming twelve years. 
And let us not forget the crown of all these 
earthly blessings — his marriage with a fair lady of 
the South, wealthy and of high social position. 
And this, too, was showered down upon him from 
that cornucopia of a year 1847. It should also 
be added that during these same months many a 
whisper among his friends suggested him as a 
candidate for the coming Presidency, though he 
was only thirty-four years old. But next year 
(1848) by the time of the Presidential election, he 
will be thirty-five, the age required by the Con- 
stitution for the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. 

A significant act of Douglas occurred in con- 
nection with his marriage to Miss Martin, the 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (3) 297 

mentioned Southern lady, in 1847. The day after 
the celebration of the nuptials, his father-in-law 
handed him a deed of a plantation stocked with 
slaves in Mississippi. Douglas at once declined 
the present and returned the deed, stating that 
he was a Northern man by birth, education, and 
residence, and that he expected to remain such; 
moreover, that he was ignorant of that descrip- 
tion of property, and would have to decline the 
responsibility of taking care of it. But he added 
that he was no abolitionist, and had no sympathy 
with their wild and ultra views. Afterwards the 
grandfather left the estate to the children of Mrs. 
and ]\Ir. Douglas. The latter once in the Senate 
declared, in replying to an attack: 'T was unwill- 
ing to assume responsibilities which I was inca- 
pable of fulfilling." 

Always the question will come up : Did Douglas 
assign his true motive in this statement? We be- 
lieve that he did not personally like to be a slave- 
holder; he was a born New-Englander and was an 
Illinoisan by adoption ; so much of the Northern 
spirit he shared. But if any other man wished to 
hold slaves, he hatl nothing to say in moral I'cpro- 
bation; and if the Southerners wished to make 
Slave States, he could look on and say, as he did 
later: "I don't care." Undoubtedly he saw it 
would be a drawback to his political prospects in 
Illinois, if he was known to be a slave-owner in 
Mississippi, and that motive must have co-oper- 



298 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

ated in making him so keenly sensitive to the 
dangerous responsibility of such property. Still, 
we must think that Douglas, otherwise quite in- 
different, was personally averse to owning a human 
being. And this the Southerners knew, and hence 
they always distrusted him. The act just men- 
tioned, generally known as it was, must have 
been offensive to the slaveholder. Douglas openly 
declined his company, refusing directly to be one 
of the great and powerful Southern oligarchy, which 
never forgave him, in spite of his services. This 
we shall see when the test came in three successive 
Democratic Conventions which nominated can- 
didates for the Presidency. Douglas remained 
unpopular with the Southern wing of Democrats, 
who did not fail to take some other Northern man 
as their true friend or tool. This may well be 
deemed the secret breach of Douglas with the 
Southern President-makers of the coming decade, 
a breach which he will try in vain to heal, till at 
last he grows defiant and splits his party. 

In the year 1847, accordingly, Lincoln, as he en- 
tered Washington, could have seen his lucky anti- 
type in a state of superb efflorescence. For 
Douglas then took his scat in the Senate from 
their common Illinois, so far ahead was he, though 
four years younger; also, his wonderful flowering 
seemed to find fit expression in his leading to the 
altar a blooming bride, wealthy, cultivated, of the 
inner social circle at the Capital. But we must 



I 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (S) 299 

mark at the same time the fatal counter-stroke in 
the happy prospect: Douglas offends at the most 
sensitive point the ruling spirits of the South, of 
his Party, and of the Nation. Unconsciously he 
breaches his own Destiny in the very moment of 
its seeming triumph. Never will he be President 
now in spite of the most flattering prospects; the 
Southern Warwicks will not accept him but will 
slaughter him in Convention after Convention, 
making the way finally for one Lincoln. 

Still Douglas is on the topmost wave of honor 
and political success, when Lincoln leaves Wash- 
ington in 1849, in a discord with himself and with 
his people. The Springfield district had elected a 
Democratic representative to succeed him, having 
discarded his old Whig friend. Judge Logan, who 
was the nominee. This result was openly attrib- 
uted to Lincoln's course on the Mexican War. 
Lincoln, therefore, feels that he goes back to a 
constituency which has rejected him. He em- 
braced at first the idea of taking office under the 
Taylor administration; he thought of accepting 
the governorship of Oregon territory, but his wife 
objected; he applied to be the Commissioner of the 
General Land Office, but failed. He was thrust 
back into his old Springfield vocation of a practis- 
ing lawyer, and had in a manner to start anew. 
Douglas kei)t in harmony with the Folk-Soul of 
the State; Lincoln was out of tune with it, and 
had to win it over again. 



300 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Lincoln must then bide his time. Issues are 
arising which will completely reverse their pres- 
ent conditions; in 1854, Douglas will experience 
the angry hostilit}^ of the Folk-Soul for his repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, while Lincoln will 
rise to the surface once more concordant with his 
people. This will, indeed, constitute a new epoch 
in the life of Lincoln, yea, in the life of both these 
antagonists. But at present Douglas is completely 
triumphant, and stays at the Capital, always ad- 
vancing in honor and influence, while Lincoln is 
remanded back by the Presiding Powers over his 
destiny to his State for what we can now see to 
be a new training. 

Casting another look at Lincoln's fortune-nursed 
antagonist, that antitypal Douglas, we observe 
once more that he rises to a prominent place in 
the Senate during these two years (1847-9), and 
becomes the Chairman of the Committee on Ter- 
ritories, at that time altogether the most influen- 
tial position in the Senate, or rather in the legisla- 
tive branch of the Government. For the grand 
coming problem of the Nation pivots just upon 
these Territories: Shall they be Slave-States or 
Free-States? Or, more deeply stated: Shall this 
Nation be generative of Slave-States or Free- 
States? Thus Douglas has planted himself at the 
very heart of the Nation's historic future; yea, at 
the turn of a node in the World's History. So we 
take a look at him, of course, with admiration, as 



THE DOUBLE LINCOLN, 301 

he mounts up and perches himself on the highest 
pinnacle of his hitherto ever-mounting career. 

But what about Lincoln? See him in a thick 
cloud of native gloom, turning down the road 
from Washington back to Springfield, after his two 
years of Congressional experience, completely dis- 
credited by the people of his own section (the 
North-West), of his own State, and even of his 
Representative District. What is to become of 
him? 

VI. 

The Double Lincoln. 

The Double Nation has now certainly produced 
the Double Lincoln through his biennial experience 
at the Capital. He is, indeed, nationalized, having 
appropriated to the full within himself the 
national dualism. From that former inner one- 
ness and harmony with the Folk-Soul of his Sec- 
tion, State, and District, he has been whelmed 
into the vortex and raging contradiction of an un- 
united Union, which is sweeping more and more 
toward complete Disunion. Yet just this is what 
he has to take up into his soul now, and to work 
it and himself over into a new unity. Truly a 
time of severance, of discord, of negation, has 
come into his life — a deep breach with himself, 
with his People; yea, with the World-Spirit. 

1. He has acted in opposition to the Folk-Soul 
as regards the acquisition of the territory which 



302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

extends Southward to the Rio Grande and East- 
ward to the Pacific. He has pleaded the law of 
nations in favor of Mexico, who wrested this ter- 
ritory from Spain, who wrested it from the In- 
dians, who wrested it from the mound-builders 
(probably), wlio wrested it from God knows whom 
(probably). The logic of this law of nations is 
that the strongest nation takes the prize, accord- 
ing Mexico's own deed and that of the rest. But 
there is a higher logic, we think and hope, than 
that of mere violence. CiviUzation demands of 
all peoples, savage or otherwise. What are you 
doing with that piece of God's earth entrusted to 
your stewardship? Are you making the most of 
it for yourself and for all the rest? If not, you 
must be brought to the account. So is now say- 
ing the Genius of Civihzation or the World-Spirit, 
which Lincoln, biased by party, does not at pres- 
ent hear, but will hear. 

2. Lincoln votes for the Wilmot Proviso, whose 
essence is that the Union is to be henceforth Free- 
State producing. But at the same time he votes 
for a political Party which smothers this very 
principle in its Convention. Deeply inconsistent 
with himself he has become, and really subversive 
of his own destiny. He is still too much of a 
Whig partisan to vote for Van Buren, a Demo- 
crat, against whom he had fought two Presidential 
campaigns. Yet Van Buren with his platform is 
the open supporter of the Wilmot Proviso, Lin- 



THE DOUBLE LINCOLN. 303 

coin's pivotal principle and the beacon of his 
future career. He has, therefore, to slough off the 
encumbering snake-skin of party — which he slowly 
proceeds to do, when the old snake itself dies and 
leaves him free. 

3. Lincoln's visit to New England during the 
campaign of 1848, was significant to him in sev- 
eral ways. He became more decidedly conscious 
of the Double Nation and of his Double Self thai? 
ever before. From the dominating pro-slavery 
atmosphere of Washington he suddenly ran into a 
strong whiff of anti-slavery ism. He felt the 
change and emphasized in his speech the Wilmot 
Proviso and General Taylor's probable leaning to- 
ward Free-Stateism, though the General was a 
born Southerner and a large slaveholder. Then 
he turned his ridicule against the Free-Soilers, 
whose doctrine was chiefly the Wilmot Proviso. 
We hold that Lincoln felt the deep inner disso- 
nance of his own argument, which he sought to 
drown in his grotesquery. Then, Lincoln, what 
would your friends of the Whig Club at Washing- 
ton, Stephens, Toombs, Preston, say to your pres- 
ent anti-slavery turn? Do you not feel the two- 
facedness in your Whiggery, and what is more, in 
yourself? And can honest Abe long stand that? 
And far more profoundly than ever do you not 
feel the doubleness in the Nation? 

In fact, just this doubleness of himself and of 
his Nation is his problem, and furnishes his com- 



304 ABRAHAM LINCOLN —PART SECOND. 

ing task. He is to undo both, first that within, 
then that without. But he must become aware of 
his own and the Nation's duahsm, ere he can per- 
form his work. His transition from South to 
North, from Washington to New England, has 
deepened to the bottom his consciousness, both of 
his personal and of the political situation. 

4. In his visit to New England Lincoln caught 
a ghmpse of another very significant fact: Anti- 
slavery disunionism existed there in no small 
energy, and shook hands with the pro-slavery dis- 
unionism of the South. He began to realize fully 
the difference between his own Free-States of the 
North- West and the Free-States of the North- 
East, both being alike in their freedom. But the 
one group sprang of the Union, the other not; the 
one was American-born, the other European-born, 
and each showed distinctly its birth-mark ; the one 
was national through origin, the other through 
agreement or compact; the one loved as its own 
very mother the Union, the other had no such 
mother to love. Lincoln felt this difference be- 
tween the two groups of Free-States in affection 
for the Union, and he is destined to have more 
experience of the fact at a later time. Already 
in Congress we have heard him discriminate him- 
self: "I am a Northern man, or rather a Western 
Free-State man" — the North having both West- 
ern and Eastern Free-State men, one set quite 
distinct from the other. How Lincoln will union- 



THE DOUBLE LINCOLN. 305 

ize the old Free-States of the North-East, for 
they, too, need it, belongs to a later chapter. 

But now we are to see Lincoln passing back 
from the Nation to the State, and quite sinking 
out of sight for a time, rent asunder and paralyzed 
by his inner conflict. Meanwhile Douglas, who 
has no such conflict within or without, mounts to 
his highest splendor and becomes the central poht- 
ical luminary of the country. 

20 



CHAPTER SECOND. 

Xincolu'6 Sub0t^ence. 

So we designate a peculiar epoch of Lincoln's 
life, the six years succeeding his Congressional 
career. He reached the center of the Nation at 
the Capital, and there he came upon the deep 
scission of the time, in which he participated but 
which he did not and could not then solve. "Go 
back, go back to thy Springfield home," cry the 
Powers, "and labor at the mighty problem in the 
•stillness of the night; for we have yet work for 
thee." So- Lincoln went home and began anew 
the practice of his profession outwardly, but in- 
wardly there is little doubt that he had many 
meditations upon the meaning of his surprisingly 
discordant experience at Washington. 

Lincoln marks significantly this time of political 
Subsidence in both his little autobiographies. In 
the first he says: "From 1849 to 1854, both inclu- 
sive, I practised law more assiduously than ever 
before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally 
on the Whig electoral tickets making active can- 
vasses, I was losing interest in politics when the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me 
again." Which means that his Whiggism was 
vanishing and the political attitude of his party 
was losing its hold on him. Li his second sketch 
(306) 



CHAPTER SECOXD—UXCOLX'S SUBSIDENCE. 307 

of himself he reiterates substantially the foregoing 
statements, emphasizing that "in 1854 his pro- 
fession had almost superseded the thought of poli- 
tics in his mind when the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise aroused him as he had never been 
before." Then he comes to the surface again and 
starts on a new phase of his career, most impoi*t- 
ant of all. 

From his subsidence in 1849 till his emergence 
in 1854-5, extends the present epoch of Lincoln's 
life. We have to ask what was he doing these 
six years? Undoubtedly he was engaged in the 
practice of the law, but at the same time he was 
undergoing a profound inner revolution. Mentally 
he was occupied as never before. But the diffii- 
culty is that he has left almost no record of this 
time. Some of his anecdotes while he traveled the 
circuit have been preserved, but they were hardly 
more than his outer diversion, his relief from the 
pressing thoughts within. When he comes into 
the White House, we shall often witness him em- 
ploying them, not only for expression, but as the 
safety-valve of his soul's tense emotions. Lincoln 
was forty years old when he left Congress, being 
in the very bloom of his intellectual power, which 
he is undoubtedly exercising, even though in 
secret. If we look through his Collected Works 
for passing glimpses into his inner life during these 
years, we are surprised at the meagreness of the 
printed output. Perhaps the most important 



308 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

document is his eulogy of Henry Clay, delivered 
July 16th, 1852. During the Presidential cam- 
paign of 1852, he confesses that he did little can- 
vassing for his candidate, Scott. Some scattered 
fragments on government, on slavery, on law, 
show his efforts at thinking fundamentally on these 
topics. Thus his outer life as historic almost dis- 
appears, having little or no record, not being in- 
volved practically in the political events of the 
time, though these must have influenced him. 

Still we catch now and then a glimpse of what 
he was thinking about, perchance of his deepest 
pivotal thought. He repeatedly said that the re- 
peal of tlic Missouri Compromise was, for him, the 
mighty shock of a new birth. The ever-recurring 
Kansas troubles kept the subject alive in his own 
soul and in that of the people. It is reported that 
on his circuit at this time he, to a great extent, 
dropped his story-telling, and was always discuss- 
ing with his legal friends the problem which had 
so ominously dawned upon the whole country. 
He would not dismiss it by day or night. Here 
is a suggestive bit which comes from a legal asso- 
ciate. Judge Dickey, who was attending court 
' with Lincoln and several friends at the height of 
the excitement over the Kansas-Nebraska bill: 

One evening several persons, including himself 
(Judge Dickey) and Lincoln, waxed hot over the 
question of the day. The Judge, being strongly 
conservative, asserted that slavery could not be 



CHAPTER SECOND— LINCOLN'S SUBSIDENCE. 309 

assailed in the States where it was estabhshed, as 
it was recognized by the Constitution. Lincohi 
maintained the ultimate extinction of slavery, and 
seemed to see the beginning of such an outcome 
in the repeal of Missouri Compromise. "After a 
while," continues the Judge, "we went up stairs 
to bed. There were two beds in the room, and I 
recollect that Lincoln sat ujd in his night shirt on 
the edge of the bed, arguing the point with me. 
At last we went to sleep. Early in the morning 
I woke up and thefe was Lincoln half sitting up 
in bed. 'Dickey,' he said^ 'this Nation cannot 
exist half slave and half free.' '0, Lincoln,' said 
I, 'go to sleep.' " (Miss Tarbell's Lincoln I, 288). 

This exceedingly significant and picturesque an- 
ecdote seems to be the first authentic record of 
Lincoln's famous dictum, which really contains 
the pith of his whole career and achievement: 
this Nation cannot exist half slave and half free. 
Nor should we fail to note the contrast between 
him and the legal-minded Judge, his companion, 
who regards the Constitution as the unalterable 
grand finality, though it provides for its own 
change, and who, typical of many thousands, 
refuses to hear the call of the age, bidding his 
agitated associate "go to sleep," while he seem- 
ingly turns over and takes another nap. 

But Lincoln does not go to sleep after such a 
mighty wrestle of the spirit; he will never go to 
sleep again upon this question till death overtakes 



310 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

him with its last sleep, and till he has not only ut- 
tered but made real that "this Nation cannot ex- 
ist half slave and half free." Truly Lincoln has 
now heard the voice of the time, and is becoming 
its mouthpiece. The approaching great act of the 
World's History he has glimpsed and briefly form- 
ulated, as yet only in private discussion. We may, 
indeed, say that he has risen to a vision of the 
World-Spirit, and has received its decree, of whose 
fulfilment he is to be the chief instrument. 

There can be no doubt that Lincoln, especially 
in 1854-5, keeps brooding deeply over the political 
outcome. He began even to think himself an 
Abolitionist — a name which he had always 
eschewed. He saw that the conflict could not 
end without the Nation becoming all one or the 
other, all slave or all free. In a private letter 
(August, 1855), he declares: "Our political prob- 
lem is: Can we, as a Nation, continue together 
permanently, forever, half slav^e and half free?" 
So he re-iterates what he deems the pivotal ((ues- 
tion of the time, and implies his conclusion pii- 
vately. It is said that Lincoln proposed to de- 
clare in a public speech his new view, but was 
dissuaded by the advice of friends. At last the 
time came when he could be no longer deterred, 
when the real issue must be oi)enly proclaimed. 
June 16th, 1858, in a speech delivered at the 
close of the Republican Convention whicli no:iii- 
nated him as candidate for Senatoi- ajraiiist 



CHAPTER SECOND— LIXCOLX'S SUBSIDENCE. 311 

Douglas, he made his famous statement that "a 
house divided against itself cannot stand," to 
which he added that this government cannot en- 
dure permanently half slave and half free. Such 
was his overture to the epoch-making campaign 
between himself and Douglas. Long had he rumi- 
nated upon the thought, discussing it among 
friends and withholding its public expression for 
some three years. 

This conclusion he drew from the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise. Again and again has the 
wall between freedom and slavery been put up by 
the old set of statesmen, but now it has been torn 
down, and, to tell the truth, neither side, neither 
South nor North, will allow it to be erected anew. 
Over the line each section cries out to the other: 
No restriction upon me. Slavery insists upon 
going into the territories, freedom insists upon 
keeping it out. And that is not all; each side is 
getting ready to fight ; in fact, they grapple al- 
ready during 1855 in Kansas, and start the over- 
ture of the Ten Years' War, which Lincoln felt 
was approaching, though he did not expect it to 
come with such a sudden and mighty crash. 

So we conceive the main fact of Lincoln's epoch 
of Subsidence, lying at the center of his active life, 
and making a sort of subterranean channel be- 
tween the before and the after of his career. A 
long and silent incubation between his fortieth and 
forty-sixth years, we may well deem it a preoara- 



312 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

tion for his coming task, a working himself free 
of the inner dissonance which he took home from 
Congress, where he voted for the Wilmot Proviso, 
but supported a pohtical party which suppressed 
its principle. But when he discerns the inner 
voice proclaiming, this country cannot exist half 
slave and half free, he has heard the call of the 
World-Spirit, and his world-historical career has 
begun to dawn. 

During this sunken time of life, along with his 
introspection and questionings, Lincoln gave much 
effort to mending his defective education. His 
association with leading men at Washington 
caused him to feel his lack of knowledge. Among 
the few items for his Congressional biography he 
sets down: ''Education defective." But partic- 
ularly his visit to Massachusetts and the East 
showed him his scholastic shortcomings, which he 
resolved to remedy. Famous has become his 
study of Euclid while upon the circuit. Literature 
also he delved into more seriously than ever; 
Shakespeare's dramas were read and pondered in 
their entirety, though he had known extracts 
from them since his boyhood. The School Read- 
ers of the time, notal^ly Lindloy Murray's, which 
Lincoln knew and praised higlily, had passages 
from Shakespeare. Herndon observes that he 
studied law more seriously than ever before. A 
general inner reconstruction he evidently under- 



CHAPTER SECOND— LINCOLN'S SUBSIDENCE. 313 

took, being thrown back violently upon his own 
limitations from the Washington experience. 

It is also to be observed that he found his chief 
pleasure in traveling the circuit from county to 
county. The communion with the Folk-Soul was 
his delight ; moreover, he was mending the breach 
between it and himself, caused by his attitude in 
Congress toward the Mexican War. He watched 
its response to the political movements of the 
time; especially did he feel its pulse in regard to 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, when he 
found himself in harmony with it again, after a 
long separation. Indeed, one of the main func- 
tions of this long Subsidence was to work an inner 
restoration of himself to the People, in which 
labor his great rival Douglas unconsciously came 
to his assistance. 

And that fortune-wreathed antitype of his, the 
well-rounded rubicund Douglas, must be noticed 
by way of necessary counterpart, verily the transi- 
tional Statesman bridging the old into the new, 
and always going up while Lincoln seems going or 
quite gone down, till the hour strikes for the sud- 
den turn in the careers of both. Again, we con- 
ceive of them as the antipodal Dioscuri of the 
age, twinned in celestial genius and planted as op- 
posites on a common territorial sphere, so that 
while the one sinks in the sundown, the other 
mounts seemingly irradiated in an eternal sunrise. 
But let us look again at them after the sexennial 



314 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

revolution of an epoch: the one is seen slowly 
climbing above the horizon in a new radiance, 
while the other on his side begins his downward 
course to his luminous setting. 

As the deepest strain of Lincoln's character 
was political, and as he was the coming states- 
man of a great historic period, we have specially 
to look at the political events of this, his sunken 
sexennium, and to scan their influence upon him, 
as far as possible. The Nation was moving to- 
ward the crisis when it would have to get rid of 
its distracting, self-destroying dualism, and Lin- 
coln was moving with it, till he became its voice 
in the new epoch. Still, during these six years 
the double nationality made a tremendous effort 
to stay double peacefully, and to instill such 
doubleness into the People as the prime sentiment 
of patriotism. Every good American citizen was 
exhorted to be as dual as his Nation — so say in 
substance both platforms, Whig and Democratic, 
in the Presidential election of LS52. But that 
simply could not be; the human soul must at 
last come to unity with itself, in order to be itself. 
Then another decree was getting louder, sterner, 
and more imperious in the Folk-Soul, the decree 
that its dualism, both individually and nationally, 
must be eliminated. A voice mightier than that 
of the Nation began to be heard, commanding 
it to unify itself and thus to put itself in line 
with the movement of the World's History, which 



COMPROMISE OF 1850. 315 

through its own development was requiring a 
federated Union of States in the American Occi- 
dent, and not a disunited Dyarchy. 

But our present task is to observe the dual 
Nation seeking to keep itself dual, and to watch 
the reflection thereof in Lincoln's unfolding. 

I. 

The Compromise of 1850. 

In the Congress succeeding that to which Lin- 
coln belonged, the slavery question broke out 
with greater fury than ever before. The South 
had set its heart upon making the lands acquired 
from Mexico into Slave States, to counterbalance 
the extensive territory of the Louisiana Purchase 
in the North-West, destined to become Free States 
by the Missouri Compromise. On the other hand 
the North, quite irrespective of political parties, 
had about made up its mind that no more 
Slave States should be formed out of the public 
domain anywhere. The cleavage between the 
two sections seemed to be widening, with not a 
few dire threats on both sides. The one American 
Folk-Soul had indeed become twain with a divided 
purpose, yea, with a divided conscience. 

It was at this point that Mr. Clay came forward 
with his attempt to heal the breach by a new 
compromise. In a way he belonged to both sides; 
he was a Southern man with Northern con vie- 



316 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

tions, and his State lay, as it were, intermediate 
between North and South. The duahsm of the 
Nation seemed to embody itself in him through 
the fact that he was an anti-slavery slaveholder. 
Clay had taken part in the Missouri Compromise 
of 1820, though he was not its author, as has been 
sometimes stated. He appeared again in the Sen- 
ate for the last act of his career, yea, for the last 
act of the compromising period of American states- 
manship, which recognized and sought to harmon- 
ize the inner dualism of the Nation. Lincoln in 
his Springfield home, ruminating on the same 
problem followed Clay, who had always been his 
pattern and Whig ideal. 

The pivot upon which the main trouble turned 
found its expression chiefly in the Wilmot Pro- 
viso, which Lincoln had so often voted for during 
his Congressional term. The South had come to 
hate it, while the North had largely adopted it, 
and made it a test of fidelity. The Wilmot Pro- 
viso implied the moral wrong of the slaveholder 
and the curse of slavery on the land; it had be- 
come, therefore, exceedingly distasteful even to 
the moderate men of the South, who were united 
against it as against nothing else. On the other 
hand the Northerner, who was hostile to slavery, 
with unflagging zeal supported it as the very 
touchstone of his principle. 

This main bont^ of contention Clay omitted and 
had to omit from his Compromise. Such action 



COMPROMISE OF 1S50. 317 

lost him the support of the more radical anti-sla- 
very Congressmen, but drew to him strong con- 
servative support, which pulled his measure 
through. Practically it was favorable to the 
Free-State men, since it provided for the admis- 
sion of California with her constitution prohibit- 
ing slavery, and for the organization of the terri- 
tories of New Mexico and Utah, just as they were, 
under the Mexican law which, unless set aside, se- 
cured their freedom. But no Wilmot Proviso, 
that reddest of red rags to the Southern bull, 
was allowed. The result was many Southerners 
supported the Compromise, though the extremists 
of their section were hostile to it from the start, 
joining hands with the Northern extremists in op- 
position. Seward and Jefferson Davis, the su- 
preme anti-slavery and pro-slavery protagonists, 
could be seen voting on the same side of the 
question. The outcome was regarded as a pretty 
fair division of the Mexican spoils between the 
two sections. The South had gotten Texas with 
the possibihty of four more Slave-States while 
the North had practically secured the rest of the 
territory, though there was some uncertainty 
about New Mexico. The general nature of the 
Compromise is well illustrated in the provision 
pertaining to the District of Columbia: the slave 
trade was abolished in its limits, but not slavery. 
The Missouri Compromise line was not a deter- 
mining element in the bill as passed, though it 



318 ABRAHAM LINCOLN^PART SECOND. 

rose to the surface often during the discus- 
sions. 

Such was the main matter, the territorial ad- 
justment, which was in general acceptable to the 
country. The Compromise of 1850 still recognized 
the dual character of the Nation as half slave and 
half free. .Moreover it practically affirmed that 
each section was productive of new States of its 
own kind. The Union as genetic remained still 
double — both Slave-State producing and Free- 
State producing. The Wilmot Proviso had sought 
to deprive the Southern half of its self-creating 
power by excluding slavery from all the territo- 
ries. On the other hand the Southern extremists 
had maintained, with Calhoun and Jefferson 
Davis, that the common domain of the country 
should be open to slavery. There is no doubt, 
however, that the People as a whole embracing 
the moderates both Northern and Southern, found 
its consciousness reflected in the Compromise. 
Webster and Clay, the two greatest statesmen of 
the old school, upheld it and thus revealed the 
same dual character to be their own. 

In the light of the future we have to think that 
the movement of History, the spirit of Civilization, 
or what we have called the World-Spirit, had 
issued already a different decree from that of the 
Compromise of 1850. The clock of the Ages was 
already striking the deepest note of the time 
which proclaimed that this Nation cannot con- 
tinue half slav(> and half free. But the Folk-Soul 



COMPROMISE OF 1S50. 319 

is not yet ready to respond to the behest of the 
World-Spirit. And Lincoln whose chief function 
is to be the voice of the coming era, is not yet 
ready, has not yet recovered from his Congres- 
sional dissonance. He with his forty votes and 
more for the Wilmot Proviso, accepts the Com- 
promise which totally ignores it and asserts essen- 
tially the dualism of the Nation. 

But we are not yet done with the present act . 
The extreme South was veiy clamorous for a 
vigorous Fugitive Slave Law, and got it from 
Clay. The peculiarity of this provision was that 
it assailed the moral conviction of the North, and 
brought up in every human soul of that section 
the question: Shall I obey Conscience or this Law, 
or even the Constitution? A whole people, of 
whom a large majority believed that slavery was 
wrong, were practically compelled to be slave- 
catchers for Southern masters. It may be 
affirmed that this part of the Compromise was re- 
pugnant to the Northern Folk-Soul, and began to 
make it think of wiping out the cause of such a 
deep contradiction within itself. ''This Nation 
cannot endm'e half slave and half free" was the 
doctrine preached with a nughty outlay of passion 
by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Thus the Com- 
promise helped undo itself, yea it intensified in 
many a soul the very malady which it was pur- 
posed to cure. It rifted more deeply the already 
deep dualism between North and South. In the 



320 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Northern Folk-Soul it produced a peculiar in- 
tense scission: it set the moral and institutional 
elements of man to warring against each other, 
inwardly and outwardly . Still for the time being 
a majority in the North, like Lincoln, accepted 
the Compromise of 1850 for its undoubted ad- 
vantages. But the execution of the Fugitive 
Slave Act often made the best spirits quiver 
through and through, as if undergoing a j^ainful 
surgical operation, in the grinding clash between 
the two obediences, here to Conscience there to 
Law. 

Douglas took an important part in constructing 
and passing the Compromise measures of LS50. 
He was chairman of the Committee on Territories 
and really was the author of the territorial part of 
the Compromise. It should be observed that he 
voted repeatedly during this session for the Wil- 
mot Proviso. But he openly declared that he did 
this not from his own conviction, but in obedience 
to instructions from the legislature of his State. 
Says he during the discussion of the Compromise: 
"I have always held that the people have a right 
to settle these questions as they choose [for ex- 
ample, slavery], not only when they come into 
the Union as a State, but that they should be per- 
mitted to do so while a Territory T Here is the 
dogma of Popular Sovereignty, which is to play 
such an important part hereafter in the careers of 
Douglas and Lincoln. 



PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIOX OF 1832. 321 

The old statesmanship which sought to keep 
the Union double, but to keep its clashing halves 
concordant by compromise, wins a triumph again 
in 1850, but the last one. Douglas, the transi- 
tional statesman from the old to the new, helps 
make it and defends it when made, but mark well 
and look out for his blow four years hence! Lin- 
coln, has settled down at his Springfield home in a 
political ecHpse almost total, languidly accepting 
the double masterpiece of his antitype Douglas 
and of his prototype Clay. 

II. 

Presidential Election of 1852. 

While Lincoln lay in the deep shadow of his 
Subsidence, there came upon him and upon the 
country a new election for the Presidency in 
1852. On the whole the agitation of the slavery 
question had "been quieted by the Compromise of 
1850, though in the North the Fugitive Slave Law 
roused strong opposition when it was attempted 
to be enforced. It kept stirring up the conscience 
of the individual against the law of the land, and 
many were the efforts to harmonize the discor- 
dant twain. Shouts came from both political 
parties to the soul writhing in the conflict of two 
duties: Stop being agitated! With the blade en- 
tering the most sensitive part of man's nature, 
there must not be even a wince. 

21 



322 ABRAHAM LINCOLX^PART SECOXD. 

The Democratic Convention nominated Franklin 
Pierce, a so-called dark horse from New Hamp- 
shire, when the old famous war-horses — Cass, 
Marcy, and Buchanan — could not win the prize, 
and the young steed, S. A. Douglas, only thirty- 
nine years old, but full of mettle, was whisked to 
one side. The unknown man again trivmiphed 
over the well-known statesmen of the party, and 
his record could be no burden. The platform was 
mainly a declaration of adherence to the Comjiro- 
mise of the last Congress, "the act for reclaiming 
fugitives from service or labor included" — which 
act also is irrepealable. Moreover, "the Demo- 
cratic party will resist all attempts at renewing, 
in Congress ' or out of it, the agitation of the 
slavery question." There is no doubt that this 
platform reflected the more quiet feeling of the 
country at that time; the future condition of the 
Territories was settled by the two Compromises of 
1820 and 1850, and most of the anti-slavery 
democrats deemed that they must painfully en- 
dure as part of the bargain, the execution of the 
Fugitive Slave Law. The characteristic of the 
Convention was the inner harmony of the party 
with itself and with the prevailing tendency of 
the whole people in both sections. The Double 
Nation was affirmed again strongly, indeed pas- 
sionately, and the Union was proclaimed as dual in 
its very nature. The Democratic party now suc- 
ceeded in making itself the representative of this 



PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIOX OF 1S52. 323 

national spirit, and startctl its campaign with an 
outlook upon victory. 

The Whig Convention nominated again a hero 
of the Mexican War, General Winfield Scott, 
practicing the same political stratagem which had 
been so successful in the cases of Taylor and also 
of Harrison. But the circumstances were much 
changed. The platform accepted the recent Com- 
promise, and therein was like the Democratic; 
also, the Fugitive Slave Law was to be enforced 
and the slavery agitation was deprecated. Each 
party thus had quite the same principles. The 
difficulty lay in the candidate, Scott, who was sup- 
posed to have anti-slavery leanings and to be un- 
der the influence of Seward, who did not accept 
the Fugitive Slave Law as the political finality, 
but favored its repeal or modification. The result 
was the Southern pro-slaverj^ Whigs began to 
bolt the ticket ; probably the two ablest were the 
Georgians, Toombs and Stephens, both of whom 
refused to support Scott on account of his Free- 
soil associations. On the other hand not a few 
Northern anti-slavery Whigs were estranged be- 
caise the platform had smothered the protest 
against the Fugitive Slave Act. The outcome 
was that a third candidate appeared in the field, 
Hale of New Hampshire, on an anti-slavery plat- 
form, which attracted many Whigs in the North. 

Plainly the Whig party was going to pieces in 
both directions, Northward and Southward. The 



324 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

candidate and the platform represented two ojDpo- 
site tendencies, and could not be welded together 
by any kind of political solder. The lurking dual- 
ism of the Nation showed itself in this rift of the 
Whig organization. The Fugitive Slave Act was 
really the wedge which shivered the old party. 
The right of Conscience would assert itself against 
the Right of the formal Law, and the great Com- 
promise itself was compromised. In comparison 
with the Whig dissolution very striking was the 
Democratic unity, which could have no scission be- 
tween candidate and platform, since Pierce's person- 
ality had almost no history, and counted for quite 
nothing or anything. He vanished in the platform 
which voiced harmoniously the general attitude 
of the Folk-Soul at that time. The result was an 
overwhelming Democratic victory, which showed 
the People closing its eyes to its own inner rend- 
ing dualism, and saying that this Nation must 
continue to exist half slave and half free. But 
this is just the Nation of which the other Power, 
called here the World-Spirit, has said: it shall not 
so continue to exist. Which of the two Powers, 
think ye, is the mightier? 

Lincoln was one of the Whig electors for Illinois, 
and did some canvassing, though less than usual, 
since he confesses to a feeling of helplessness for 
the cause . He certainly was not at one with him- 
self, nor with the people of his State, upon whose 
topmost wave he could behold his rival Douglas 



PRESIDEXTIAL ELECTION OF 1852. 325 

swimming buoyed with boundless hope. Lincohi 
went to pieces with his old party in 1852, and 
sank down after the election into the darkest 
night of his long political obscuration . 

During this campaign of 1852 (July 16th) he 
delivered a eulogy upon the death of Henry Clay, 
recently deceased . As a whole it is not a strong 
performance. The peculiarly striking thing about 
it is its omission; there is no account of Clay's 
most recent and perhaps most notable political 
service in the Compromise of 1850. Only one 
faint allusion to it can be detected in Lincoln's 
own words, and one other allusion in a cited pas- 
sage from a newspaper. He spends most of his 
time upon the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and 
Clay's view of negro colonization. The fact seems 
to be that Lincoln was lukewarm over the Com- 
promise of 1850, though he accepted it as a dis- 
agreeable necessity. 

Li the Democratic campaign of 1852 Douglas 
was doubtless at his best. It is said that he 
spoke for Pierce "in twenty-eight States out of 
the thirty-one." The fact is that Douglas and 
his leading theme were now in accord with the 
Folk-Soul. This theme was that the Union 
must remain double, and must continue to produce 
two kinds of States. Douglas had a chief part in 
framing the Compromise of 1850, though it went 
under the great name of Clay. Lincoln had ac- 
cepted that Compromise, and also the Whig jjlat- 



326 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

form of 1852 which re-affirmed it. Douglas had 
in a way absorbed him, and still he attempted to 
speak against Douglas when there was really no 
political issue between them. But the personal 
issue remained between the two antitypes, and 
this phase of their long rivalry had its special 
manifestion, in which we behold Lincoln sallying 
forth to the combat, as it were without weapons, 
and gloriously defeating himself. Douglas had 
made a famous campaign speech at Richmond, 
Va., which was published in the newspapers 
throughout the country. Lincoln replied to it at 
Springfield before the Scott Club. It is agreed by 
Lincoln's warmest friends and biographers (Lamon 
and Herndon) that the speech was a fizzle, yea 
worse, much worse than a mere fizzle. 

It was worse for it showed Lincoln 's downright 
jealousy of his fortunate rival. He speaks of "old 
times when Judge Douglas was not so much 
greater man than all the rest of us as he is now," 
and when "I used to hear and try to answer many 
of his speeches," for instance in the Harrison cam- 
paign twelve years ago. So Lincoln will try now, 
as this present speech of Douglas is not ''marked 
by any greater ability" than the old ones, and has 
"the same species of shirks and quirks." Really, 
however, there is no issue of })rinciple between 
the rivals. In fact Lincoln now directly indorses 
the speech of Douglas at Chicago in 1850 defend- 
ing the Compromise of that year. So what can 



PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1S52. 327 

he say? He drops down to buffoonery and to 
petty cavilings which open a surprising glimpse 
into Lincohi's heart toward his great competitor. 
It can be said that this speech may be taken to 
mark the deepest point of descent in Lincohi's 
Subsidence, while Douglas at the same time 
reaches, if not his greatest fame, at least the most 
fortunate part of his career in a happy unity with 
his people. 

Perhaps some jealousy may be excusable in the 
intense rivalry between the two competitors. But 
they were not now thrown together personally, 
and Lincoln woukl have shown the nobler char- 
acter by an appreciation of his rival's command- 
ing qualities. In this regard the fact must now be 
duly stated : Douglas appreciated Lincoln better 
than Lincoln appreciated Douglas. The one in- 
justice of which Lincoln could be capable was in- 
justice toward Douglas, who, however, did not fail 
upon occasion to recognize the worth of Lincoln. 
We hope and we believe that Lincoln renounced 
much of his prejudice against Douglas at their last 
interview in the White House, when the latter vol- 
untarily went to his life-long antagonist after the 
firing on Fort Sumter, and offered his great influ- 
ence and his life, as it turned out, for their now 
common cause. 

But if we have now touched the lowest dip of 
Lincoln's sexennial Subsidence, and on the other 
side have gazed at the highest dazzling arc of 



328 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART SECOND 

Douglas's fortune, both occurring somewhere 
about 1852, we may next watch with wonder- 
ment the sudden shift of their destinies two years 
later. Our twinned Dioscuri of the Prairie have 
begun to change positions; behold Lincoln start- 
ing to ascend and Douglas to descend. Tell 
us, ye Powers, what prodigious convulsion, what 
cosmical disturbance produced such a quick dis- 
placement, or rather mutual reversal in the careers 
of our two Giants, verily the sons of Zeus. 

III. 

The Repeal of 1854. 

An oft-cited statement of Lincoln runs: "1 was 
losing interest in politics when the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise roused me again." The dec- 
laration suggests his awakening from his long 
period of hibernation, the beginning of his rise 
from his Subsidence. In fact the Folk-Soul itself 
in the North sprang up from its sleep, and with it 
rose Lincoln as its leader. He was now one with 
it again and soon took his place in the front line 
of its coming political battle. 

Moreover the cause of this volcanic upheaval 
was his life-long rival and antitype, Douglas. Of a 
sudden their situations in regard to the people of 
Illinois and of the North-West were changed. 
Douglas had hitherto been the favorite of fortune, 
the popular darling ; Lincoln had been out of ac- 



THE REPEAL OF 1854. 329 

cord with the Folk-Soul, and politically submerged. 
All at once by his own act Douglas was over- 
whelmed with an Oceanic wave of unpopularity, 
and the first man to meet him in serious contest 
on the soil of their common State was Lincoln, 
voicing the outraged Folk-Soul in its wrath at the 
abrogation of the time-honored Missouri Compro- 
mise. If Lincoln for his Congressional conduct 
during the Mexican War had sunk out of sight 
under the People's disapproval, Douglas had now 
to meet a popular maelstrom agitated from its 
depths by passion. 

Through the Missouri Compromise of 1820, 
slavery had been prohibited by Congress north of 
the latitudinal line of 3G degrees and 30 minutes. 
The territory then vaguely called Nebraska, was 
thus devoted to the making of Free States, and 
was ten times larger than New York. It was evi- 
dent that equality in number between the North- 
ern and Southern States was seriously threatened, 
and the South was chafing a good deal under the 
outlook. A new North was about to arise west 
of the Mississippi, equal in area and population 
to the already existent North, which was getting 
restive under the South's control, and had shown a 
decided hostility to slavery. The trend of migra- 
tion had always been toward these new Free- 
States of the North- West. The coming political 
l)roblem of the Southern leaders presented itself 
thus: How can we wrench at least a part of this 



330 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

territory from freedom to slavery? The Missouri 
Compromise stood in the way, and it must be 
somehow circumvented or eliminated. 

The man who undertook to remove this obstacle 
was a Northerner, a born New-Englander, but 
Senator from Illinois. Douglas prepared the bill, 
and it was chiefly through his energy and stra- 
tegic ability that it went through both Houses of 
Congress and became the law of the land. Every- 
body then asked, and the reader still asks, What 
was the motive of Douglas? He claimed that the 
Missouri Compromise had been already repealed by 
the Compromise of 1850 in the clause pertaining 
to New Mexico and Utah — which statement could 
hardly be verified as a fact. He said he wished to 
banish the slavery agitation from national politics; 
but his act certainly brought about the oppo- 
site. Still he maintained that his object was to 
establish a great principle, which he called Popular 
Sovereignty. Really, however, his doctrine was a 
blow at the Union as State-producing; Congress 
was denied the power of training its own territorial 
children for Statehood; especially was it prohibited 
from acting on the main i)oint whether the new 
States shall be free or tlave. Thus the Popular 
Sovereignty of Douglas was a relapse to a kind of 
political chaos, and was a denial of the essential 
character of our government as the State-produc- 
hig State. So Douglas proclaimed the non-inter- 
ference of Congress in the very matter in which 



THE REPEAL OF IS04. 331 

it ought chiefly to interfere, if it be truly a Con- 
gress of the United-States. 

But the deepest underlying motive of Douglas 
remains to be probed. He had his heart set upon 
the Presidency. He could not get the nomination 
without the help of the South, But the Southern 
leaders always suspected him, as has been already 
indicated ; not a few actions and statements of Ms 
had been ambiguous ; they knew that he was ang- 
ling for their support, yet was a man of too great 
independence to be plastic in their hands. In 
1852 he received only two votes from the South 
in the nominating Convention. Hence it was be- 
lieved at the time, and has been believed ever 
since that the leading motive of Douglas in the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise was to win 
Southern support for his Presidential aspirations. 

As we look back at the Repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise through a vista of more than fifty 
years, we can see that it has had results far be- 
yond the mental range of its author, of its sup- 
porters, and of its enemies. Really it assailed 
and tore down the recognized wall of separation 
which had been set up between the Slave-States 
and the Free-States that were to be born there- 
after. The enactment which chiefly settled the 
new Nation as double, is repealed, and with it be- 
gins the movement toward the complete oblitera- 
tion of the national dualism. In about ten years' 
time the work is done. The Repeal of the Mis- 



332 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

souri Compromise declares negatively that the 
Union cannot remain double — cannot continue 
half slave and half free. Positively we may also 
read in it, glancing backward by the light of His- 
tory, that the Union must henceforth be Free- 
State producing, for the agreement which practi- 
cally made it bring forth a black and a white 
twin is cancelled. 

It is true that no such purpose lay directly in 
the mind of Douglas, though at times he seems to 
have faintly glimpsed such consequences lurking 
in his act. Nor did the people, Northern or 
Southern, see this deepest trend of the Repeal, 
nor did Lincoln at first. But its world-historical 
purpose all can now discern. The North nearly 
unanimously opposed it, poured out unmeasured 
obloquy upon its author, and even burned him in 
effigy. And yet it was the very means by which 
the North passed into the South and assimilated 
the same to its own freedom. To do this was the 
training of the North in the Kansas conflict. On 
the other hand, the South favored the bill and 
gave to it its chief support in Congress. The 
Southern statesmen did not see that they were 
throwing down their protecting bulwark against 
the already stronger North and ever growing 
stronger. Before the Repeal the Southerners 
fought behind battlements, but after it they had 
to_ come out and fight against superior numbers 
in the open prairie. And this was done by their 



THE REPEAL OF 1854. 333 

own deed, seemingly in a kind of defiance. Never 
did the irony of History mask itself so elusively 
to both sides. The North was angered at their 
greatest blessing, the South was rejoiced at their 
greatest curse . The one execrated their benefac- 
tor, Douglas, the other hymned praises to their 
destroyer, Douglas. And this Douglas seemed 
quite unconscious of the ultimate trend of his 
deed. Unwitting instruments of the World-Spirit 
they all now seem, bringing forth the new homo- 
geneous Union in the place of the old double na- 
tionality. 

Was there any man on either side who possibly 
felt some faint intimation of the far-off result? 
The old Texan hero, Sam Houston, was the only 
Southern Democratic Senator who voted against 
the Repeal in the interest of the South, declaring 
with a gleam of prophetic forecast: "It is the 
worst thing for the South that has ever transpired 
since the Union was formed." But he stood 
almost, though not quite, alone in his Section. 
Houston saw in the bill its undoubted negative 
element against slavery. And on the other hand 
did any Northern statesman catch the secret hand- 
writing of destiny in the Repeal? Several of 
them, according to reports which are later. Chase, 
hearing the boom of cannon celebrating the victory 
of Douglas, is recorded by his biographer as ex- 
claiming on the steps of the Capital when going 
home in the morning from the final vote: "They 



334 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

celebrate a present victory, but the echoes they 
awake will never rest until slavery itself shall 
die." So this is the beginning of the end accord- 
ing to Chase, who had shown himself the most de- 
termined and ablest Senatorial opponent of the 
Repeal. But if he saw in it the death of slavery, 
why did he not support it, abolitionist that he 
was? Caught in the ironical sport of the World- 
Spirit which makes him do the opposite of what 
he is and sees, unto its end, and not his own. An 
exultant prophecy is also reported from the lips of 
Sumner: This bill "annuls all past compromises 
with slavery and makes all future compromises 
impossil^le. Thus it puts freedom and slavery 
face to face and bids them grapple. Who can 
doubt the result?" Certainly not Sumner; still 
he touched off all his superb rhetorical fireworks 
against the measure, trying somehow to scare or 
bedazzle the World-Spirit whose working he sees 
and strikingly describes in the foregoing citation. 
He calls it "the worst bill" in its immediate re- 
sults, but in the long run "the best bill on which 
Congress ever acted." Why not support it then? 
But he speaks and votes against "the best bill" 
for the anti-slavery cause, thus dashing water on 
his own brilliant pyrotechnic display, or rather 
showing that it is at last a mere display of his 
own virtuosity. But let the reader not forget 
Sumner's words above quoted : they announce very 
impressively the coming historic fact. Seward 



THE REPEAL OF 1854. 335 

likewise made a speech, which has a significance 
in the same direction. His was the keenest mind 
of the great oratorical trio of anti-slaverj^ism in 
the Senate, and he could not help indulging in an 
undertone of exultation that slavery had now 
started to undo itself through its own friends. 
Seemingly that subtle spirit of his was not averse 
to seeing the bill pass, especially in the way it did 
pass. One thinks, too, that his speech, which is 
not a very strong one for him, was hamstrung by 
his insight into the irony of the situation on both 
sides, at which he cannot help having a furtive 
chuckle, of course quite inaudible to the party 
which he was supporting. But later he gave him- 
self credit for a still deeper subtlety. What shall 
we say to this claim of Seward recorded by 
Montgomery Blair whom he told that "he was the 
man who put Archy Dixon, the Whig Senator 
from Kentucky in 1854, up to moving the Re- 
peal of the Missouri Compromise as an amendment 
to Douglas's first Kansas bill," which had no such^ 
Repeal in it, and that ''he had himself forced the 
Repeal by that movement and had thus brought 
to life the Republican party." So Seward claims 
to have been the Zeus supreme over both sides, 
and to have pulled the Olympian strings which 
brought about their clash, to the final utter un- 
doing of the South. And Seward makes himself 
a kind of Homer and sings a little Iliad for his 
own heroship or rather godsliip — a colossal proph- 



336 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

ecy in retrospect, we cannot help thinking. Still 
there is no doubt that Seward had at the time 
a keener perception of the inner self-contradictory 
dialectic of both parties in this measure than any 
other statesman at Washington on either side. 
Really just in that subtlety lay his unique talent, 
to which he became at times the victim. So it 
befell perhaps that he could afterwards portray 
himself taking the place of the supereminent 
World-Spirit and directing the whole business 
with a providential design beforehand, not only 
to the destruction but to the self-destruction of 
slavery. 

In the movement of present biography, ac- 
cordingly, the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
brings about a new Epoch, causing the emergence 
of Lincoln from his long discipline of political Sub- 
sidence. He had felt himself remanded to pri- 
vate life and personal obscurity. But at present 
he rises with the mighty upheaval of the Folk- 
Soul, and is soon its chosen voice, yea, its leading 
organizer into a new party. Now he becomes 
truly gigantic in fact as well as in form, having 
gotten a cause in which he can fully exert his new 
power won through his long inner discipline. The 
feeling of jealousy toward his rival may not be 
wholly extinguished, but it can be transformed 
into a noble indignation against that rival's wrong- 
ful deed. 



ARISE, OR BE FOREVER FALLEN. 337 

IV. 

Arise, or Be Forever Fallen. 

Not the Devil was it now, calling to his lost 
souls that lay prostrate on the burning lake (as 
Milton tells us), but the good Genius of Lincoln 
himself it was, who, reinforced indeed by the 
mighty voice of the World-Spirit, thus spoke to 
him, bidding him wake up and arise from his long 
lethargic sexennium. Lethargic externally he 
seemed in his silent broodings, but internally very 
active he; yea, creative and re-creative of liimself. 
Such we hold to be his spiritual training in the 
silent Netherworld through which he has now 
passed, getting rid of his dualism, of his political 
sin, analogous to that religious sin, the stages of 
which Dante has described as his own in his pur- 
gatorial journey. But, alas! Lincoln has left us 
no description of his spiritual itinerary through 
what we have called his Subsidence; hardly more 
do we see of him than a plunge downward, head 
foremost, as it were, in biting discord with himself; 
then the long, long stay underneath, quite out of 
i^ight internally, till his friends thought him lost 
as a public man But now we again see him 
cleaving his darkness and standing up glorified, as 
he starts out a new man on his new career, with 
that voice (we may suppose), ringing in his ears: 
"Arise, or be forever fallen." He has *jndecd 
heard it, for he is ready to hear it, having had 

22 



338 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

his long inner probation to that end; moreover, 
the time, too, is ready and is calling for him and 
his like to begin the new era in the Nation. 

Repeatedly have we announced the fact that 
Lincoln, after having taken the discipline of his 
sunken sexennium, is to rise from his long Subsi- 
dence, rise with the Folk-Soul and become its 
leader and mouthpiece. Quite sudden was this 
emergence, as the occasion of it came so unex- 
pected. Lincoln has left a vigorous description of 
the fact in a speech delivered in 1854, a few 
months after the Repeal. Says he in reply to 
some complaints of Douglas: ''He should remem- 
ber that he took us by surprise, astounded us, by 
this measure. We were thunderstruck and stunned ; 
and we reeled and fell in utter confusion. But we 
rose, each fighting, grasping whatever we could 
first reach, a scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping axe, 
or butcher's cleaver. We struck in the direction 
of the sound, and we are rapidly closing in upon 
him. He must not think to divert us from our 
purpose by showing that our drill, our dress, and 
our weapons are not entirely perfect and uniform." 

Thus Lincoln in a striking image portrays the 
maddened Folk-Soul, headed by himself on the 
hunt after the arch repealer of the hallowed Com- 
promise of 1820, as soon as the latter touched the 
soil of Illinois. The population was chiefly agri- 
cultural, and hence the angry farmer seized his 
nearest implement, with wliich he was at work in 



ARISE, OR BE FOREVER FALLEN. 339 

the fields, "a scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping axe," 
and made a rush at the pubhc man whom he 
deetned his betrayer. For that Folk-Soul, living 
in a Free-State, believed in the same as its own 
very essence, and moreover, believed that the 
Union should be Free-State producing. There is 
no doubt that Lincoln gives a truthful picture of 
the indignation at Douglas in his own State and 
throughout the North. When the Senator reaches 
home from Congress he hears on all sides of him a 
far-echoing multitudinous shout of wrath: here he 
comes, the recreant! up and at him ''with scythe, 
pitchfork or chopping axe." Certainly a disor- 
ganized shouting mass of ire it is now, but it will 
soon get organized into a party, for it is acting 
under a common principle in the form of impulse 
which declares that no more Slave-States shall be 
made out of the territories, that this Federal Union 
shall hereafter produce Free-States only. 

In the interest of this biography we are now to 
follow Lincoln emerging from his eclipse and grad- 
ually becoming the leader of the new principle and 
its party. The decree of the World-Spirit we may 
well deem it, for it is to make itself supremely 
valid in the coming years. Lincoln hears this de- 
cree and voices it to the people, who are indeed 
ready, yea, are demanding it and calling for a 
leader. At the call we may behold stepping forth 
out of the shadow of his previous years and be- 
ginning his new career, the form of Abraham Lin- 



340 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

coin, whose first task is an herculean contest with 
his old antagonist, Douglas. 

Already before the arrival of Douglas, it seeftis, 
Lincoln had started campaigning for his friend 
Richard Yates who was running for Congress, and 
had made strong anti-Nebraska speeches, which 
had surprised people by their earnestness. When 
Douglas came into the State, he had his first ex- 
perience with an angry constituency at Chicago, 
where he was hooted from the platform. That 
was in Northern Illinois, strongly anti-slavery and 
bitterly anti-Nebraska. He soon betook himself 
to Springfield, his old home, where he spoke at 
the State fair, which had drawn a vast concourse 
of people. On the next day, October 4, 1854, 
Lincoln answered him in a speech which has not 
been preserved. But the two contestants now 
step forth into the arena, and fight their first 
pitched battle on the new issue, which is destined 
to have a great history. Significant is it that 
Lincoln now follows Douglas about from place to 
place in order to reply to him before the people. 
The sunken man has risen to the surface once 
more and is selected for the coming task, energet- 
ically pursuing and challenging to combat his 
strong adversary. On October 16th they meet 
again in an oratorical duel, this time at Peoria, 
Lincoln making a speech which he wrote out for 
publication, and which must be regarded as an 



ARISE, OR BE FOREVER FALLEN. 341 

authentic statement of his views at this time 
(Lincohi's Works, I., p. 180-209). 

Now this Peoria speech has a very important 
biographical interest as being the first recorded 
utterance of the new Lincohi after or even during 
his emergence. For when he made it, he was not 
yet fully emerged, and the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
had been passed by Congress only a few months 
before. All was yet in a seething, fermenting 
stage; Lincoln himself was more or less in that 
condition ; he had yet to evolve somewhat, as well 
as the whole country. Still he has certain dis- 
tinct lines of thought which he has well elabo- 
rated, and is full of the history of the subject and 
its lesson. 

His main proposition is that the Missouri Com- 
promise ought to be restored. For the sake of the 
Union it ought to be restored. We ought to elect 
a House of Representatives wliich will vote for its 
restoration. Very little prospect of such a retrac- 
tion there was, since the Senate could not be 
changed for years. The chief reason for the re- 
peal of this repeal was that otherwise "we shall 
have repudiated — discarded from the councils of 
the Nation — the spirit of compromise; for who 
after this, will ever trust in a national compromise? 
That spirit of mutual concession — that spirit which 
first gave us the Constitution, and has thrice saved 
the Union — we shall have cast from us forever." 
Lincoln does not apparently see that the day of com- 



342 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART SLCOND. 

promises with slavery is past, ended by the act of 
slavery itself, and that the direct struggle between 
the two sides is at hand. Lincoln has not yet 
quite reached the insight that this Nation cannot 
exist half-slave half-free, but he will soon reach it 
and say it. The abolition of that Missouri Com- 
promise means to the eye of the World-spirit, the 
abolition of slavery, but hardly yet to the eye of 
Lincoln. He is still too much enmeshed in the 
old order of statesmanship headed by Webster 
and Clay, good for its time no doubt, but now 
transcended forever. No more compromises, cries 
the South and therein starts undoing itself, which 
is just at present the supreme decree. Idyllic Lin- 
coln repeats prayerfully in this speech: "Restore 
the Compromise and what then? We thereby re- 
store the national faith, the national confidence, the 
national feeling of brotherhood." Alack-a-day ! no 
such paradisaical happiness is ever again possible 
to this Nation till the deep-seated source itself of 
all Compromise be reached and cleaned out for- 
ever. And of that painful cleansing Lincoln is 
destined to be the leader. 

So our speech-maker at Peoria on that October 
day proposes still to keep the dual L^^nion, cause 
of never-ending inner conflict and turmoil, to keep 
it by compromise, ji.s it has so long been kept. As 
well might the children of Adam seek to return 
to Eden, from which they have been ex- 
pelled. Lincoln shows his hatred of slavery in 



ARISE, OR BE FOREVER FALLEN. 343 

this speech, and pricks many a sophistical bubble 
cleverly blown by Douglas for vindicating himself 
before the people. Evidence of historic study, as 
well as a deep moral earnestness one finds in the 
well-considered argument, which has also keen 
logical thrusts along with bright metaphorical 
sallies. But there is a total absence of story-tell- 
ing, of grotesque humor, of the funning and fab- 
ling, which were so prominent once and will be 
again. What has thus sobered him? We can only 
conjecture that his inner wrestle has been so in- 
tense that it has for a time overlaid that strain of 
his character. 

Still in the tone of the speech there is heralded 
a young hope, which elevates and illumines its 
seriousness. Upon Lincoln has dawned a bright 
auroral promise of a new career at the age of 
forty-five years, in the very flowering of his highest 
talent. And a cause has been given him into 
whose advocac}^ he can pour forth the deepest 
conviction both of his moral and institutional 
nature. And let it not be forgotten! that adver- 
sary and antitype of his, so long triumphant over 
him, he can now clutch with the grip of Ophiu- 
chus and hale the violator of what he deems the 
right before the judgment-seat of the Folk-Soul, 
yea of the Ages. 



344 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

V. 

Lincoln and Douglas (4). 

Lincoln, as we have shown, has gone back to the 
Folk-Soul of his State, and indeed of his Section, 
for a fresh dip in the original protoplasm of the 
People, out of which the Great Man of the time is 
to be formed, or perchance to be re-formed, if he 
have suffered some obscuration, or some estrange- 
ment from this fountain-head of his institutional 
being. There Lincoln slowly gets a new adjust- 
ment, traveling the circuit as a lawyer and mingling 
with his legal associates as well as with the plain 
folk, with whom again he comes into harmony. 
Upon him and them a fresh conviction is dawning 
with the movement of the time, verily the impress 
of the Age's purpose, the stamp of the World- 
Spirit taking an advanced stride toward its histor- 
ical goal. So we conceive Lincoln performing his 
fameless service to the presiding Powers over his 
and his Nation's destiny. 

Meanwhile his rival and counterpart Douglas is 
swimming triumphant on the topmost wave of 
fame and political influence. At the same time 
we must note the drawback: there at Washington 
he is losing touch with the Folk-Soul of his State 
and Section — losing that which Lincoln is gaining. 
This is the undercurrent or rather countercurrent 
in the mighty onflowing stream of Douglas's pop- 
ularity, certain to rise to the surface with the 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (4) 345 

years. The atmosphere of the Capital was very 
different from that of the North- West; the poht- 
ical influence of the South dominated at Washing- 
ton and also the social, both of which deeply 
transformed the ambitious and susceptible Sen- 
ator. His marriage with a Southern lady of 
wealth and position had a tendency to make him 
more formal and even aristocratic. Then there 
was the spatial separation between him and his 
constituency, to which he returned again and 
again to give an account of himself, but wliich 
showed a dissonance always increasing. We be- 
lieve that the reason why Douglas lost hold of his 
People lay chicfl}' in the legislative body of which 
he was a member, indeed the most prominent and 
forceful member. The Senate is farther removed 
from the throbbings and aspirations of the Folk- 
Soul than any other branch of the Government. 
Indeed its organization is the antithesis of a pop- 
ular institution, and its spirit has often shown 
itself not only indifferent but antagonistic to the 
People. As a body essentially aristocratic, it was 
the great entrenched fortress of the South, and re- 
mained quite inexpugnable by the rising con- 
science of the North till the Southern Senators 
ran off and left it in 1861. Now of this govern- 
mental body Douglas became more and more the 
ruling mind and the real incarnation, though of 
course with strong and jealous opposition from 
both North and South. But taking him all in all, 



346 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

he was the greatest Senator the country ever pro- 
duced, greater than Webster though not so impos- 
ing in stature or so classic in speech, greater than 
Clay or Calhoun, and since his time we have not 
looked upon his like again in the Senate. Still on 
the other hand just here lay his limit, and his 
very excellence became his bane ; his supreme Sen- 
atorial fitness unfitted him for the Presidency, and 
his chief legislative deed undid him for chief Ex- 
ecutive. Lincoln wanted to be Senator, but the 
Powers forbade him decidedly, forbade him twice, 
no doubt in the interest of himself and his Nation. 
The Senate might have ruined him, producing a 
second and deeper alienation from the Folk-Soul 
than did the House of Representatives, which laid 
him on the shelf for so many years. The great 
Presidents have on the whole come directly from 
the People, not throi;gh the Senate or Judiciary, 
which are so different in function from the Pres- 
idency. The Senate through its constitution is 
quite inclined to streaks of domination, if not of 
usurpation, to arbitrary and ii-responsible conduct, 
to jealousy of the other governmental powers, and 
to defiance of public opinion. Corresponding to 
these drawbacks undoubtedl}' arc found important 
virtues. Long tenure of ofRce, the small and se- 
lect number participating in the honor, and espe- 
cially an election removed from the People have 
the effect of separating the Senator from the Folk- 
Soul. It was, therefore, not at all the i)lace for 



I 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (4). 347 

Lincoln, whose supreme function was both to feel 
and to sway the popular heart directly in the ap- 
proaching crisis of the Nation. Douglas, there- 
fore, through his long Washington experience had 
gradually lost his intimate connection with his 
People, and had violated their deepest political 
instinct, which was to have a Nation productive 
of Free-States only. On the other hand Lincoln 
is completely harmonious with that instinct, now 
that the disagreement caused by the Mexican War 
is a thing of the past. 

On two memorable occasions Douglas returned, 
for the purpose of giving an account of his stew- 
ardship, to his angry constituency. The first was 
when he defended his work in the Compromise of 
1850. The Common Council of Chicago had 
passed a string of violent resolutions, one of which 
practically declared for the nullification of the 
Fugitive Slave Law, and even of the Constitution, 
chiefly on the ground that "the laws of God 
should be held paramount to all human compacts 
and statutes." The whole affair was preposter- 
ous, indeed a downright comedy, whose theme 
was in substance, "The Common Council of Chi- 
cago as the expositor and defender of the Laws of 
God." The very statement ought to have pro- 
duced a horse-laugh even in that furious multi- 
tude, and sent them all home in a fit of merri- 
ment. Douglas met them, answered their ques- 
tions, cowed them with his leonine aggressiveness, 



348 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

and actually drove them to adopt a set of resolu- 
tions offered by himself and friendly to the Com- 
promise, "without a dissenting voice." And the 
Common Council the next evening "by a vote of 
12 to 1" repealed its act of nullification in favor 
of "the Laws of God," evidently quitting theology 
for the more congenial field of ward politics. 

It was an easy, but gfeat and overwhelming 
victory for Douglas. And there is no doubt that 
he voiced the feeling of the people in regard to 
the Compromise of 1850, much as they clishked the 
Fugitive Slave Law. Moreover, they had no real 
leader; Lincoln was in his Subsidence down at 
Springfield, and he would have agreed with 
Douglas in the main points, though with very 
different sympathies. That Chicago crowd was a 
foolish, disorganized, headless mass, which nullified 
itself completely in the hands of Douglas. Still 
there was something in it of which he might well 
take heed. That Law of God, or Law of Con- 
science, in its conflict with the Constitution was 
striking deep roots in the Folk-Soul, as he might 
infer, even from the comic interlude of the City 
Council. In fact, he was led into a kind of theo- 
logical disquisition himself by the following ques- 
tion: "A gentleman here rose and inquired of Mr. 
Douglas whether the clause in the Constitution 
providing for the surrender of fugitive slaves was 
not in violation of the law of God?" Douglas, re- 
plying shiftily, plunges into a metaphysical disser- 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (4). 349 

tation on divine and human law, which that crowd 
certainly did not understand, and he probably tlid 
not understand it himself. For he, seemingly 
without knowing it, gives away his whole position. 
He declares "that there is a law paramount to all 
human enactments," and that this law, "the law 
of God, is intended to operate on our consciences, 
and to insure the performance of our duties as 
individuals and Christians." Seward with his 
Higher Law, never did and never could ask for 
more. Douglas goes on to state "that the divine 
Law does not prescribe the form of government 
under which we live," and so forth — all of which 
does not help out, but tends "to ink the waters 
like a cuttle-fish." But let us drop this matter 
here with the observation that Douglas, so bril- 
liantly successful in nullifying the nullification of 
the Chicago Common Council, is not at home in 
discussing or even in understanding the grand 
conflict between Conscience and the Constitution, 
which is rising with such might in the Northern 
Folk-Soul, and of which this Chicago mob was a 
real, but a wild, ugly, grotesque manifestation. 
The deep moral questioning of the time lay out- 
side of his horizon. 

Through his unparalleled, and we think, deserved 
success upon this occasion, Douglas would believe 
that he could meet and quell any uprising of the 
people against him. This brings us to his second 
memorable return to Chicago after his repeal of 



350 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

the Missouri Compromise in 1854. Again a mob 
larger, angrier, and more implacable than the one 
of 1850, received him and would not let him speak, 
"though he tried four hours (Sheahan says, from 8 
P. M. to 12). Flags were at half-mast, church 
bells tolled, hisses and groans were his welcome. 
He gave up and left the city, hurrying off to 
Democratic Egypt for consolation. Certainly this 
was a great contrast to his former victory over 
the Chicago mob, which now seemed of a different 
mettle. The Common Council did not this time 
make themselves the champions of ''the Laws of 
God," but their place was taken by a very differ- 
ent set of men, the preachers, largely of New Eng- 
land origin, who turned the city and the whole 
North- West blue and sulphurous with the HeU- 
fire of their damnation of Douglas. And literal 
fire was used to burn him in hundreds of effigies, 
by whose light he once said himself that he could 
travel all the way from Illinois to the Atlantic. 
But the present deep estrangement of his people 
Douglas never fully overcame, even if afterwards, 
through his attitude toward the Lecompton fraud, 
he rose anew in the popular estimation. 

Perhaps all this oi:)position to Douglas would in 
time have bubbled off and have become quies- 
cent. But now steps foi'th out of his obscurity a 
leader of men, in deep sympathy with this new 
indignation of the outraged Folk-Soul. Abraham 
Lincoln starts to organizing these sudden elemental 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS (4). 351 

forces into a permanent political party, and to give 
voice to the people's antagonism against Douglas, 
who has long been his personal antagonist and 
antitype. But Lincoln is very careful to shun the 
pitfalls of the former opponents of his wily foe. 
He draws the lines of his new organization with 
surpassing skill. He shuns the doctrine of the 
Higher Law with its hostility to Enacted Law and 
Constitution. He grants that slavery cannot be 
touched where it is by the central government, and 
that the South has a right to a Fugitive Slave 
Law, much as he dislikes it personally. In gen- 
eral, he makes his party completely institutional, 
and thus draws to it and harmonizes with it the 
Folk-Soul, which clings most ferventty to its insti- 
tutions. At the same time he builds a channel 
through which the moral protest against slaveiy 
can find a vent, and can finally realize itself even 
in the Constitution. 

Well may Douglas have said in these days that 
Lincoln gave him more trouble than the whole 
Senate of the United States with all its great anti- 
slavery orators, including Chase, Sumner, Seward, 
every one of whom was inclined to let their moral 
indignation violate the institutional sense. Then 
Douglas has not now before him the aristocratic 
Senate, to whose character he had by long practice 
completely assimilated liimself, but he must address 
the People of the North- West and meet in their 
presence Lincoln, the greatest champion they ever 



352 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

had, who by long practice had assimilated himself 
to them and had become their veiy voice. Doug- 
las, therefore, in his turn, has to pass through a 
time of estrangement from the Folk-Soul, though 
it will be quite different from that out of which 
Lincoln is just emerging. He will suffer no drop 
into the unseen depths below, like a geologic fault 
in the earth whose siu-face sometimes breaks and 
sinks many fathoms down out of sight. No long 
penitential subsidence will he wander thi^ough in 
the night of his soul, the pugnacious Little Giant; 
rather will he thrust himself, into the pubhc eye 
more than ever , valiantly fighting a losing battle 
during his sexennial combat (1854-60), with a 
tough heroic endurance. But he at last will end 
(as we shall see) in peace and reconciliation, even 
with his mortal antitype. 

Lincoln knows well his own personal feeling 
toward Douglas, that unworthy strain of jealousy 
in his heart; he knows too that it must now be 
kept under, or at least be used to tip with the fire 
of its passion the arrows of justice that they burn 
to their mark. Every great deed done by man 
has its individual side, which is his interest or his 
passion; but this must be subordinated to the 
universal end, and thus become ennobled through 
bringing about something far higher and worthier 
than itself. Some such transformation we may 
now observe in Lincoln. 



LINCOLN'S EMERGENCE. 353 

VI. 

Lincoln's Ennerqence. 

Already it has been observed that Lincoln in his 
Peoria speech (October, 1854), had not yet fully 
evolved. He did not yet fully see the bearing 
of the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise upon 
the Nation or upon his own career. But when 
perchance about a year later he is seen ''half sit- 
ting up in his bed," seemingly after a night's 
struggle, and is heard declaring, "this Nation can- 
not exist half slave and half free," he has tran- 
scended the limitations of his Peoria speech, and 
his emergence may be deemed complete. The Re- 
peal of the Missouri Compromise need not now be 
repealed; indeed it must stand as a great step 
toward the goal beginning to hover distantly in 
Lincoln's outlook. He finds lurking in that Re- 
peal a foreshadowing of the obliteration of the 
institutional difference between North and South. 
It starts to wiping out Mason and Dixon's line 
both literally and spiritually. It commences the 
rapid stride toward Appomattox. Truly Lincoln 
has now heard and begun to utter the decree of 
the World-Spirit. 

To be sure, in some of his later speeches he still 
seems to favor the abrogation of the Repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise, using it cliiefly to tilt 
against Douglas, whose act he with his party op- 
poses. The full bearing of that Repeal indeed 

23 



354 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

nobody appears to have yet fathomed. We have 
seen great Senators opposing it, while declaring it 
to be the best thing that ever happened against 
slaveiy . Lincohi also is at first caught in that subtle 
irony of the World-Spirit, which is compelling the 
hottest supporters of slavery to destroy it, and 
the ablest opponents of slavery to fight for it, of 
course unconsciously. But Lincoln will soon come 
to see that the Repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise was, in its deepest though unintended scope, 
the mightiest stride ever yet made toward the de- 
struction of slavery. Through it alone could he 
ever have been led to say that this • Nation must 
become all one thing or all the other, the wall of 
separation being now broken down. Hence he 
grows less insistent upon repealing the Repeal, 
that is, up(>n setting up the dividing wall again. 
Indeed after the Drecl Scott decision that wall 
could not well be replaced by any Congressional 
action or compromise. It may be here added 
that even Douglas, after three years or so, recog- 
nizes the anti-slavery trend in his Repeal, and se- 
cretly takes credit for it with certain Republicans. 
But let us again cast a look upon Lincoln emerg- 
ing from that long, dark, silent Subsidence, a sort 
of unsung purgatorial journey through which he 
has now passed. Let us recur once more to that 
significant picture of him sitting up in his bed and 
voicing his soul's sleepless wrestle. The image re- 



I 



LLYCOLX'S EMERGENCE. 355 

calls the four greatest lines, in our judgment, of 
modern poetry: 

Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass, 

Wer nie die kiimmervoUen Nachte, 
Auj seinem Bette weinend sass, 

Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Machte. 

So says Goethe, poetizing how the human be- 
ing comes to the knowledge of the Supernal Pow- 
ere. Lincoln may not have shed tears like the 
more sentimental German, but the conflict which 
brings him to a vision of the Divine Order is the 
same. He is rising out of that sunless Subsidence 
into the illumination of the coming sun-up, and 
he hears the behest of the God of Light, and gives 
to it an utterance. 

Such, then, may be deemed Lincoln's emer- 
gence, and its first pregnant expression. He is 
passing out of that unspoken discipline of six 
years, during which he has been undergoing an 
inner transformation, as well as winning back the 
Folk-Soul, whose estrangement from him has been 
already recorded. Of a sudden the two come to- 
gether and unite in a kin4, of lightning flash, 
though both had been slowly unfolding toward 
this new reconciliation, not to be dissolved again 
at death, but rather to grow through and after 
death. The two souls, that of the Folk and that 
of Lincoln, are now joined in an immortal love, 
the depth and intensity of which even increase as 
the years keep receding from his mortal presence. 



356 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

And another peculiar conjunction may be wit- 
nessed: Lincoln and Douglas again whirl to- 
gether, but far more mightily in their antithetic 
careers; not since they had their first early tourna- 
ment at Springfield have they met in a direct per- 
sonal contest. During thirteen years and more, 
each has moved in his own separate orbit. Still 
they are counterparts, and form the two living 
sides of one total movement. They belong to- 
gether, one cannot truly be without the other, and 
History cannot do without either. So behold 
them once more revolving about each other with 
an ever-increasing velocity, yet moving toward 
their common goal. This makes a new epoch in 
the life of Lincoln, and also in that of Douglas; 
the Lincoln-Douglas sexennium it is now, in 
which the long rivalry of the two protagonists has 
to be definitely settled ; both appeal to their com- 
mon State, and then to their common Nation, 
which makes the choice between the Dioscuri of 
the Prairie, and thus closes the contest. 



CHAPTER THIRD. 

ITbe National Cboicc. 

So another epoch of some six years has arisen 
(1855-18G1) which presents the alternative to 
the Folk-Soul, Lincoln or Douglas? Hitherto we 
have seen the twain repeatedly conjoined in this 
biography under the rubric "Lincoln cmd Douglas," 
each on the whole pursuing his own way, yet 
continually interrelated in a kind of antithetic 
movement. Li the first epoch (1842-9) of the 
present Period we have watched Lincoln losing 
touch with the Folk-Soul of the State and Section, 
and then being j^lunged into a time of obscura- 
tion, during which he- has slowly been restoring 
the lost tie (1849-55). Quite the reverse has been 
the career of Douglas in these two epochs : the first 
shows him in harmony with the Folk-Soul and 
riding by means of its favor buoyantly to his high- 
est position in the Senate of the United States; but 
in the second epoch he can be observed moving 
gradually toward his great breach with the Folk- 
Soul of his State and Section, through his repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise. Thus the two antitypal 
characters of the time show two antithetic move- 
ments which we may imagine to curve around 
opi)osed to each other in this way : while Lincoln 
is going down, Douglas is mounting up, and then 

(357) 



358 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

when Lincoln rises again, Douglas is sinking. Slill 
Douglas, on account of his lengthy Senatorial 
tenure, is not remanded to the Folk-Soul, there to 
do long penance in obscurity, till he becomes 
transformed, as was the case with Lincoln. Doug- 
las still can fight from his vantage-place in the 
Senate, shaking his lion's mane with a grandiose 
pugnacity, even against the irate People. Bub the 
time will come when he has to appear before its 
judgment-seat, there to face Lincoln as accuser. 

Douglas did the greatest favor to Lincoln that 
the latter ever received, though there was no such 
intention and the act was unconscious. The re- 
peal of the Missouri Compromise brought to the 
front the question whether the Union shall hence- 
forth produce Slave-States or Free-States. This 
gave to Lincoln his true theme, and opened to 
him the opportunity of becoming the Great Man 
of his age. Already his persistent voting for the 
Wilmot Proviso indicates his conviction that the 
Nation must produce Free-States only; but through 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise he is driven 
to the conclusion that the Nation cannot continue 
half slave and half free. We conceive Lincoln 
standing behind that dividing wall quite paralyzed 
through his acceptance of it as final, and indeed 
insurmountable, till Douglas breaches it and act- 
ually throws it down, aided enthusiastically by 
the South. Then Lincoln rushes in, followed by 
the North at first reluctantly, and sweeps onward 



CHAPTER THIRD— THE NATIONAL CHOICE 359 

till he enfranchises not only the territories, but all 
the Slave-States new and old. The first direct 
breach leading to this event was made by Doug- 
las, and made by him unwittingly, for Lincoln, 
who could not have done it himself. Through 
this same breach Douglas designed to march to 
the Presidency, but through it without design 
Lincoln was the man who marched to the Presi- 
dency instead of Douglas. 

In fact the deepest work of Douglas in this 
part of his career is that of a divider of his own 
people. He breaches the Democratic Convention 
of 1852, causing such a violent rupture between 
the old and new set of leaders that the dark horse 
called Franklin Pierce, has to be brought out. 
Then the repeal of the Missouri Compromise has 
certainly breached the masses of his party. Then 
he breaches his own Democratic Administration 
under Buchanan in the Kansas trouble. We shall 
see that he will almost succeed in breaching his 
Republican opponents, but he will be thwarted in • 
that act by Lincoln. Nor is this the end of his 
breaching. He becomes a separator, a duahzer, 
after being at first a compromiser, supporting 
strongly the Compromises of 1820 and of 1850. 
Thus he turns a destroyer of liis own party, doubt- 
less unintentionally. He undoes it, seeking its 
headship, and prepares the way for Lincoln, who 
ought to thank him, but does not, for he too can- 
not fully comprehend the plan of the World-Spirit 



360 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

in using Douglas to breach his own part5^ A 
deeply negative strain runs through his career 
during the present epoch of it, manifesting its 
highest point in the negation of the Missouri Com- 
promise. He practically wipes out the agreed line 
of separation between North and South, and then 
brings that separation into the Democracy, which 
topples it down from its supremacy. Note again 
the contrast: while Lincoln is unifying himself 
out of his dualism, Douglas is dualizing himself 
out of his former oneness. In general it may be 
said that the World-Spirit now employs Douglas 
as a mighty demonic energy of destruction inside 
his own political organization, which is thus made 
self-undoing. Meanwhile we can see Lincoln 
going the other way, working to bring forth a new 
positive order out of the break-up and wreckage 
of parties. In this sexennial epoch we are to 
behold the dualizer Douglas and the unionizer 
Lincoln as counterparts in the one great move- 
ment of the time, the negation of Douglas being 
the condition of the affirmation of Lincoln. The 
dual Nation, so strongly insisted upon by the 
Little Giant is to be made over into the one Na- 
tion by the Big Giant. Still it must not be for- 
gotten that Douglas, amid all his breaches and 
dualisms, did in the deepest of him cling to the 
Federal Union as the ark of salvation; therein far 
down at the bottom of their political being he and 
Lincoln were one, and rested on the same ultimate 



CHAPTER THIRD— THE NATIONAL CHOICE. 361 

foundation. Will anything in the future ever 
bring that deepest common conviction, that one- 
ness of the now antagonistic, yea antitypal twain, 
to the surface, where it can be seen and even pro- 
claimed? Yes, we may here foresay, taking a look 
in advance; on that Sunday at Washington, when 
news of the firing upon Sumter arrives, Douglas 
will proceed to the White House and en ist under 
Lincoln, then commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy of the United States — seemingly the first en- 
listed man of the war. That is indeed the end of 
their long rivalry ; they have reached down to the 
institutional unity which was common to both 
from the beginning, and which underlay their 
deepest political differences. 

The point in which they came together from op- 
posite poles was the love of the Union. Their po- 
larity showed itself in their diverse policies for 
keeping the Union intact. Its dualism, its half- 
and-halfncss must come to an end, says Lincoln ; 
that is what must endure to the last, says Doug- 
las, who, however, never went so far as to favor 
Calhoun's dyarchy, or scheme of two Presidents, 
Northern and Southern, with a power of mutual 
veto. Both, so antipathetic otherwise, loved the 
Union; this must remain, though Lincoln wanted 
it homogeneous as to freedom, but Douglas heter- 
ogeneous. Upon this difference is their struggle, 
till they both arc brought to face the deeper con- 
flict, that against the Union itself. 



362 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Thus we enter upon a third sexennium, not 
pressing too rigidly its Hmits in time. From Lin- 
coln emergent to Lincoln as President lies an 
epoch of his life lasting six years about, and hav- 
ing its own central fact or unity. This unity Hes 
in the continued contest of Lincoln against 
Douglas as the originator, defender, and promulga- 
tor, first of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
and then of its correlative doctrine, Popular Sov- 
ereignty. The combat started really when Lin- 
coln first grappled his antagonist at the Spring- 
field Fair, October 4th, 1854, and ended with his 
election to the Presidency over Douglas mainly, 
and his inauguration at Washington March 4th, 
18Gl,at which Douglas was present and courteously 
held his hat — a very striking, and we think, sig- 
nificant act, turning gently the long and bitter 
contest into a kind of reconciliation, probably 
more on the part of Douglas than of Lincoln. 

The present is indeed the final desperate strug- 
gle between the two political combatants, which 
always had its personal substrate springing from 
two opposite characters and two radically differ- 
ent world-views. Hence, we call them antitypes, 
whose individual collision was at first local and 
confined to* their State, but rose gradually to be- 
ing national, and finally world-historical. We 
have already noted far back in the legislature of 
Illinois their original diversity, as well as the start- 
ing-point of their double career. Neither probably 



CHAPTER THIRD— THE XATIOXAL CHOICE. 363 

ever lost sight of the other; each forefelt in the 
other the lurking demon of his own negation. So, 
like double suns, they circled about each other 
mutually repellent, yet inseparable and moving in 
a common political orbit. At first Douglas was 
the great luminary and shone with a dazzling ra- 
diance, while Lincoln passed spiritually into an 
eclipse, out of which he finally rose, surpassing, if 
not absorbing, his rival. 

We have seen Lincoln following Douglas from 
place to place when the latter had returned home 
from Washington in 1854, just after his great 
deed of erasing the Missouri Compromise line. 
Suddenly Lincoln quits the quest and goes back 
to his law-office at Springfield. What is the mat- 
ter? It is reported that after the Peoria encoun- 
ter Douglas hunted him up and said to him flat- 
teringly : "You are giving me more trouble in de- 
bate than all the United States Senate; let us 
both stop and go home." Lincoln agreed, being 
through his feelings somewhat gullible; report says 
that Douglas broke the agreement and spoke 
afterwards at Princeton, Ills., being harried there 
by the taunts of Owen Lovejoy. In consequence 
of this violation of promise Lincoln felt himself 
overreached, and lowered his opinion of Douglas, 
previously not very high. In this connection 
Hcrndon cites a humorous but searching judgment 
of Lincoln about his own weakness: "It's a fortu- 
nate thing I wasn't born a woman, for I cannot 



364 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

refuse anything, it seems." The power to say no 
was not strongly developed in him, when he was 
touched through his emotions; still we shall see 
that he had an iron Will, when the emergency 
called it out. Otherwise Feeling would often sur- 
prise him and make him too yielding on what 
seemed to him lesser matters. 

In 1854 Lincoln was elected to the State Legis- 
lature from old Sangamon, as he had been twenty 
years before from New Salem. In that early 
legislative experience of his, he had first met 
Douglas, and it is probable that even then 
they eyed each other in a kind of forefeeling of 
their life's rivalry. Mighty and angry was the 
rise of the Folk-Soul against its favorite Douglas, 
and Lincoln was its foremost champion. He re- 
signed his position in the local Legislature that he 
might be a candidate for the National Senator- 
ship. The brilliant prize of his highest ambition 
floated alluringly before him. Illinois had chosen 
in 1854 an anti-Nebraska Legislature, which was 
to elect a Senator in place of Shields, Lincoln's old 
fellow-duelist and a follower of Douglas. The po- 
sition naturally belonged to Lincoln as the chief 
leader of the new movement, and as the ablest an- 
tagonist of the Little Giant. Thus their contest 
would become national, being transferred to the 
Senate of the United States. But Lincoln did 
not win, though he had a much larger vote in the 
legislature than anv other anti-Nebraska candi- 



CHAPTER THIRD— THE NATIONAL CHOICE. 365 

date. There were some members of the Demo- 
cratic antecedents who would not support him, 
an old Whig, so that he had in the end to throw 
his influence to Trumbull, who was chosen. Four 
years later he will meet with the same failure. 
The spirit presitling over his destiny will keep him 
out of the Senate, and with good reason. Lincoln 
has another task than the legislative, and must be 
held to his training. The Senate is a formal, 
aristocratic body; Lincoln, on the contrary, was 
informal and democratic. Of all the branches of 
our government, the Senate is farthest removed 
from the people, and is the least responsive to 
the popular heart. The aristocratic South was 
long intrenched in the Senate as its stronghold, 
and proposed to hold it through new Slave States. 
The struggle in Kansas went back to a struggle 
for the possession of the Senate. Douglas had 
lost touch with the people of his State and the 
North through his long Senatorial career. Lincoln 
is, accordingly, remanded by his good Genius, to 
be sure against his will, to the people, from whom 
he is not to separate. If he had gone to the 
Senate in 1855, he would probably never have 
been President. On the whole the instinct of the 
Nation has been to keep its greatest Senators out 
of the Presidency, notably Clay and Webster, also 
Benton and Calhoun, and we may add Douglas 
and Seward and Blaine. No, the Senate was not 
the place for Lincoln, and we believe that he felt 



366 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

something of the kind after the contest was over. 
He was to stay back and live with the Folk-Soul 
till it was ready to bear him aloft directly to the 
highest position in the land, that he be its leader 
in its supreme crisis. The fact is, the Senate and 
the Presidency have shown themselves more anti- 
pathetic to each other than any of the rest of the 
Constitutional offices. 

What Lincoln had really to do next is seen m 
what he set about doing after his defeat for the 
Senate. Many discordant and otherwise hostile 
elements had been suddenly dashed together in 
opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise. Moreover they had won their first battle, 
after which they began to show signs of going 
asunder. Lincoln's immediate task was to keep 
them together by organizing them into a new po- 
Utical party based on their common principle, and 
to put liimself at the head of it as mouthpiece and 
leader. The newspapers must first be secured and 
united ; a convention of the anti-Nebraska editors 
of the State was called at Decatur, in whose work 
Lincoln is kno^n to have had a hand. On the 
same day, February 22nd, 1856, a national con- 
vention with a similar purpose was held at Pitts- 
burg, which set in motion the Republican party 
in the Nation. 

The Decatur meeting called a convention to be 
held at Bloomington May 29th, for the purpose of 
nominating a State ticket and sending a delega- 



CHAPTER THIRD—THE NATIONAL CHOICE. 367 

tion to the first Republican National Convention 
at Philadelphia, June 17th. The dissident ele- 
ments of the young party were still imperfectly 
welded together; the old divisions of Whig, Dem- 
ocrat, Free-Soil still seamed through the Conven- 
Jbion and antagonized its members. They had not 
forgotten their ancient history. Who is the man 
that can fuse them into harmony and unity 
here and now? There was a call for Lincoln, a 
spontaneous shout for the leader. He came for- 
ward and made a speech whose effect was long re- 
membered, for it smelted all the refractory ingredi- 
ents of that Convention and rendered a united 
Repubhcan party possible in Illinois. Moreover it 
placed him at the head of the new organization of 
his State, and on the line of march toward the 
Presidency. It has been known as the lost speech 
of Lincoln, as it was not reported in the news- 
papers. 

Accordingly we now start upon the third sexennial 
epoch of Lincoln in this Second Period of some 
eighteen to nineteen years — say from 1842 till 
1861 — dm'ing which his supreme personal task is 
to make himself national. The whole time we see 
him in • training to be the leader and also the 
teacher of the Folk-Soul in its long onerous world- 
historical duty of bringing the dual Union to one- 
ness, through freedom. He is the chosen man, 
chosen first by himself and then by the World- 
Spirit, to lead the Nation out of its old, ever-men- 



368 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

acing half-and-halfness into a true unity with 
itself. So we mark three sexenniums in the pres- 
ent Period of Lineohi's biography, each of wdiich 
has its own distinct movement of his spirit. First 
he nationahzes himself immediately, passing 
from Springfield to Washington ; but thereby he is> 
plunged into the national dualism, out of which he 
has to unfold through a long submergence ; finally 
he nationalizes himself again, but now unified out 
of dualism, and proclaiming the unity of Nation as 
Free-State producing only. Truly the Great Man 
must unify himself before he can unify his People. 
In this last sexennial epoch Lincoln will have 
Douglas as his ever-present competitor who repre- 
sents the Double Nation in the North, which is 
called to choose between the two contestants and 
their principles. Even Lincoln i)roposes to keep 
the old Nation double, but not the new-born chil- 
dren of it, the incoming States. But the outcome 
is that both parties of the North and both North- 
ern leaders, Lincoln and Douglas, are unified in the 
presence of the deeper dualism, called Disunion, 
which ominously rises to the surface in the South. 
With this practical evanishment of the Northern 
dualism, the hotly contested Lincoln-Douglas sex- 
ennium closes, but at the same tinie opens upon 
the greater national conflict. Now for the record 
of the final grapple between the two mighty anti- 
types, C(>rtainly the greatest characters of the po- 
litical sort in the Nation. 



KANSAS. . 369 

I. 

Kansas. 

It happened during this time that the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise did not merely excite a 
theoretical discussion about slavery, but it intro- 
duced at once an intense, ever-irritating practical 
problem. The Kansas territory being opened for 
settlement, immigrants from the North began to 
pour in with the design of making it a Free-State. 
On the other hand armed bands came across from 
the Missouri border for the purpose of seizing the 
election machinery and through it forcing Kansas 
into slavery by fraud and violence. A collision 
between the two sides seemed certain already in 
1854, and the prelude of the coming Civil War 
began to be heard in Kansas. We may note that 
Lincoln in his Peoria speech gave a striking de- 
scription of the colliding elements already on the 
ground at work, and then added a deep-toned 
prophetic forecast of the conflict which was certain 
to arise out of it and to involve the whole country : 

"And really what is to be the result of this? 
Each party within having numerous and deter- 
mined backers without, is it not probable that the 
contest will come to blows and bloodshed? Could 
there be a more a]:)t invention to bring about col- 
lision and violence on the slavery question than 
this Nebraska project is? I do not charg(> or be- 
lieve that such was intended by Congress; but if 

24 



370 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

they had literally formed a ring and placed cham- 
pions within it to fight out the controversy, the 
fight could not be more likely to come off than it 
is, and if this fight should begin, is it likely to take 
a very peaceful, Union-saving turn? Will not the 
first drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the 
Union?" 

It must be recollected that this speech was de- 
livered in October, 1854, barely four months after 
the opening of the territory for settlement by the 
proclamation of President Pierce. Already Kan- 
sas had become the arena of contest and the 
champions had entered the lists. Next month the 
Missourians will cross the border and elect Whit- 
field delegate to Congress (November, 1854), with- 
out opposition however. But the following spring 
(March, 1855), the first invasion of Kansas takes 
place from Missouri, for the purpose of choosing a 
legislature. At this point resistance begins, and 
the war opens, destined to spread from Kansas 
over the whole land, and to last ten years. Very 
suggestive is it to note this early foreboding of 
Lincoln who seems to hear in the distance "the 
knell of the Union," but who is destined to be the 
supreme leader and supereminent figure in the 
preservation of the Union, 

As already stated Lincoln proceeds to organize 
the seething chaotic opposition of the Folk-Soul 
•to Douglas and his Nebraska policy and to solidify 
it into a permanent party. Kansas helps him, or 



KAiYSAS. 371 

rather the Missourians who, by renewed invasions, 
keep the Xorth in a continual whirl of agitation 
and wrath. The excitement is not permitted by 
the South to die out till the Republican party be 
formed with its one basic principle : no more sla- 
very in the territories. All of them must be free, 
not alone Kansas, which, however, is the immediate 
present goal. Of course this means that now a 
great organization has arisen which declares that 
the Union must hereafter produce Free-States 
only. Thus the issue has become open, palpable, 
direct, and is to be fought to a finish. 

Such was in general the purpose and the theme 
of Lincoln's "Lost Speech" (at Bloomington, May 
29th, 1856), which had such a hypnotic power upon 
even the hardened reporters, that they forgot their 
vocation and could not move a finger to write a 
sentence. Still a few fragments of this most fa- 
mous and seemingly most impassioned political 
speech that Lincoln ever made, has been dug up 
in recent years (see Miss Tarbell's Life of Lincoln, 
II., p. 30G). The upper note appears to have 
been: Kansas must be free. Still this is not to be 
done by violence but peaceably, by ballot and not 
by bullet. The restoration of the Missouri Com- 
promise is still mentioned by Lincoln, but it rather 
falls into the background in view of the more 
pressing question, the freedom of Kansas. He 
however, feels that sooner or later we may have to 
meet force by force, ''but the time has not yet 



372 ABRAHAM LINCOLN-PART SECOND. 

come" in the present year 1856. Strangely pre- 
monitory is this gleam of what he will be called 
to do in 18G1 ! Moreover in attaining these re- 
sults we must be loyal to the Constitution and the 
Union. Lincoln is not a revolutionist, but a thor- 
oughly institutional man. Indeed he has a pre- 
sentiment that he with his new party may be forced 
to maintain the Union against the Southern Dis- 
unionists who already are threatening its dissolu- 
tion in case of the election of a Republican Presi- 
dent. This brings him to what must be deemed 
the climax of his speech, which was seared upon 
the memory of those present: ''We will say to 
the Southern disunionists : We won't go out of the 
Union and you shan't." 

Thus Lincoln makes himself the voice of the 
Northern Folk-Soul, and prefigures in his words 
the act of 1861 some five years before the fulfil- 
ment. What he here declares, is to be accom- 
plished in the deed; he voices to the people in the 
dialect of the people the decree of the World- 
Spirit. We the North wont't go out of the Union 
and you (the South) shan't. It is the grand pro- 
hibition uttered years beforehand which has to be 
enforced by arms. The effect of the words seemed 
to work upon the hearers like an inspiration from 
supernal sources. Lincoln prophesies what is to 
be, and unconsciously places himself as the exec- 
utor of the supreme behest: You shan't. 

Many si^oradic attempts had been made to form 



KAXSAS. 373 

a new party in opposition to the pro-slavery ten- 
dencies of the Democracy. There has been no lit- 
tle disputation about the place where the Republi- 
can party started, and about the man who was its 
true founder. Numerous centers of crystallization 
may be pointed out during this anti-Nebraska pe- 
riod in most of the Northern States. Victories 
had been won and Illinois had sent an anti-Ne- 
braska Senator to Washington, Trumbull. Still 
the forces opposed to the compact, well-drilled 
Democracy were an irregular militia, full of fight 
but without much unity or discipline. Now, this 
Convention at Bloomington (May 29th, 1856), 
was the most important act of co-alescence in the 
history of the Republican party, and this was 
mainly the work of Lincoln. His speech fused the 
recalcitrant self-repellent atoms and laid down 
the lines upon which there could be an united ac- 
tion in the future. He centered the opposition to 
the one supreme point of keeping slavery out of 
the Territories. At the same time this opposition 
must be in accord with Law and Constitution. 
Only thus could it win the support of the anti- 
slavery men of Southern birth, of whom Central 
and Southern Illinois were full, Lincoln himself 
being one of them and their greatest representa- 
tive. 

On this last point a significant citation from 
Lincoln's ''Lost Speech" (as reported by Whitney) 
may be given. After stating the fact that free- 



374 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

dom was preserved to Illinois in 1824 through the 
strenuous efforts of Governor Coles, who was "a 
native of Maryland and President Madison's pri- 
vate secretary," Lincoln speaks of his own South- 
ern associates: ''Palmer, Yates, Williams, Brown- 
ing and some more .in the Convention came from 
Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going to Mis- 
souri), not only to better their conditions, but to 
get away from slavery. They have said so to me, 
and it is understood among us Kentuckians that 
we do not like it one bit." Here we catch a 
ghmpse of the underlying motive of that great 
migration from the Slave-States to the North- 
West, which had been going on' so many years, 
and of which Lincoln himself was an example. 
And the further reflection presses to the front that 
the Republican party, with its hostility to slavery 
so carefully laid down on institutional lines, was 
largely the work ofrSoutherners, who had migrated 
to the Free-States of the North- West. Of course 
there was anti-slavery ism, strong, yea, rabid in 
the old States of the North-East, but it had not 
the same tendency to show an unfailing regard foi- 
Union and Constitution, and could never have 
gained the battle for freedom. 

The transition from the Anti-Nebraska up- 
heaval, based mainly npon a negative, as we sec in 
ita name, to the Republican part}^, based upon an 
affirmative, as we see in its chief doctrine of tcM- 
ritorial freedom, seems to have been largely the 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN (1856) 375 

work of Lincoln. Other distinguished men un- 
doubtedly co-operated in Illinois and elsewhere, 
and the new party was the outcome of a great 
popular movement; still Lincoln stands pre-emi- 
nent as its organizer. And so solid was its or- 
ganization that it resisted all the subtle efforts of 
Douglas at a later time to breach it in Illinois, 
though he had astonishing success in other States 
than his own, particularly in the East. We have 
to infer that the best leadership of the young party 
showed itself in the West, and its leader there was 
Lincoln. The Bloomington Convention of 1856, 
with its "Lost Speech," is, therefore, a pivotal 
event in the history of the party, which now is 
planned and directed on lines that will ultimately 
lead it to victory. We are to see that Lincoln 
organized the political forces and formulated the 
political doctrines which finally carried him into 
the Presidency. It is not said that he was the 
first to start them, for they bubbled up spon- 
taneously almost everywhere in the North from 
the depths of mightily agitated Folk-Soul. But 
he had a chief hand in shaping them unto the ful- 
filment of their end, and then took, or rather had 
to take, the leadership. 

II. 

The Presidential Campaign (1856). 
In the Democratic Convention of 185(3, the strik- 
ing fact is that the South rejects, has to reject, its 



376 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

two chief Northern supporters. Pierce, during his 
Administration, had certainly manifested his 
friendliness, if not his subserviency, to the South- 
erners; but his policy hal lost him the North, and 
he could not have been re-elected. Besides, he 
had shown himself weak-willed — a defect which 
the People despise in an Executive. But how 
about Douglas who had certainly no lack of will- 
power? He has to be rejected also by those for 
whose sake he has sacrificed his popularity in his 
own State and in the whole North. On the first 
ballot he received only fourteen votes from his 
Southern supporters. Very doubtful seemed his 
election if nominated. And not a few Southerners 
suspected him; he had already emphasized strongly 
the doctrine that the People of a territory must 
determine whether they will have slavery or not^ — 
a doctrine not agreeable to the extremists of the 
South. Douglas could not help feeling the sting 
of ingratitude when he saw that his very cham- 
pionship of the Southrons and their cause, was 
what made them throw him overboard, as unavail- 
able in his own section. The stress being upon a 
negative availability, the nomination fell to James 
Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who had been out of 
the country during the Kansas trouble, as minis- 
ter to England. He had not taken sides, but the 
South evidently knew their man, and took care 
that they knew him. He had less will even than 
Pierce; indeed, he must be pronounced the most 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN (1S56). 377 

will-less Executive (really a contradiction in terms), 
that ever occupied the Presidential chair. As a 
counterpart to him the Republican Convention 
nominated John C. Fremont, then an unknown 
man as regards character or fitness for the position 
of President. 

As the candidates represented almost nothing 
personally, the two platforms furnished the fight- 
ing-ground for the campaign. It was thus a con- 
flict of principles, each party had to explain before 
the people the reason of its existence. On the 
whole the Democratic may be called a Douglas 
platform, ro-affirming the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise and the non-interference of Congress 
in the Territories. And the idea of Popular Sov- 
ereignty seems to dominate the resolution which 
declares that the People of all the TeiTitories have 
the right "to form a Constitution with or without 
domestic slavery," and it is to be formed ''through 
the legally and fairly expressed will of the actual 
residents." But here rose the ambiguity: Douglas 
and the Democratic Administration thought that 
the Missourians, having seized the legal ma- 
chinery, represented "the legally and fairly ex- 
pressed will of the actual residents." But how- 
ever interpreted in this matter, the platform as a 
whole, maintained the Federal Union to be two- 
fold still— Slave-State producing and Free-State 
producing, as it undoubtedly had been in the past. 

The essential thing in the Republican platform 



378 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

was the declaration that Congress could and ought 
to prevent the spread of slavery into the Territo- 
ries, all of which, and not merely Kansas, should 
become Free-States. This is Kansas made univer- 
sal, or at least national. Hence the campaign 
slogan of the new party was. Freedom is national, 
Slavery is sectional. To this was retorted with 
effect that the new party, having practically no 
existence in the South, was itself sectional. Thus 
there came about the peculiar political cross-fire of 
the two sides in which a sectional party main- 
tained a national principle, and a national party 
maintained a sectional principle. 

Breaking out of this confounding sport of 
phrases, we can see distinctly that the Republican 
party now affirms for its basic doctrine that the 
Federal Union, as genetic, must be henceforth 
Free-State producing only. Undoubtedly this prin- 
ciple had been often before enounced, especially 
as a third-party doctrine; but now it is backed by 
one of the two great political parties and has an 
outlook upon realization. We may, therefore, 
consider it a great new step in advance, really a 
new view of the Union, compared with for\ncr 
platforms of the two leading parties. That which 
individuals and smaller political bodies had long 
since uttered, at present gets organized in one of 
the larger parties — an event truly epochal, just at 
this time bi'ought to the surfac(> chiefly by the 
Kansas conflict. Thus the Republican platform 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN (1S56) 379 

of 1856 has in it a progressive evolutionary ele- 
ment; while, on the other hand, the Democratic 
platform clings essentially to the old view of the 
Union as diialistic, as productive of both Slave- 
States and Free-States. 

The Republican doctrine substantially takes 
away the politically creative power of the South, 
wliich is to produce no more States of its own kind. 
The Southerners -naturally regarded this doctrine 
as assailing their equality in the Union, since it 
deprived them of their participation in the produc- 
tion of new States, which is really the deepest and 
most unique activity of the American form of Gov- 
ernment. Now it was this doctrine of restriction 
put upon the South that forced it to the opposite 
doctrine, w'hich seeks to keep it State-producing, 
as creative of at least its share of States. Hence, 
the Southerners started to insist upon the protec- 
tion of slaves as property in the Territories ; thus 
slavery would have an equal, if not better chance 
of making them Slave-States.' It was at this point 
that the South began to distrust Douglas for liis 
doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, which allowed 
the people to settle this question of State-produc- 
tion. 

Here too we may note that the Republican doc- 
trine has its limitation . It did not touch the already 
existent Slave-States, and seek to make them 
Free-States. The Federal Union, if it is to be 
universally Free-State producing, cannot stop with 



3S0 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

the Territories. And a true principle will render 
itself universal — which result the war brought 
about, making also the former Slave-States over 
into Free-States. And this is what Lincoln saw 
and asserted when he declared that this Nation 
cannot remain half-and-half, but must become all 
one thing or the other; freedom or slavery must 
universalize itself, and Lincoln, as all now see, 
was to be the chief instrument of such universal- 
ization . 

But this is not yet, though certainly on the 
road. Buchanan, the Democratic candidate was 
elected, getting 174 electoral ••■ votes to Fremont's 
114, while the third candidate Fillmore won but 
a single State, Maryland. Noteworthy is it that 
the North went overwhelmingly with the Repub- 
licans, the South even more overwhelmingly with 
the Democrats. Very plainly does the election 
show the breach in the Nation. Still the Nation 
as a whole declares that it is double, yea cre- 
atively double. So the South understands the 
situation, and backed by another four years' ad- 
ministration, proceeds anew to make a Slave-State- 
out of Kansas. The territorial troubles, quiescent 
during the Presidential canvas, begin to flame 
up again with fresh energy, undoubtedly insti- 
gated from Washington. For the South cannot 
surrender its fundamental right in the Union, 
namely to produce States of its own kind. The 
equality of the Sections is gone if the North alone 



THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 381 

possesses the reproductive power of the Nation. 
This is really the struggle, now renewed with 
fresh desperation. 

At the same time, as a prelude of its revived 
purpose, the South flings a bomb which had for a 
while the effect of dazing the whole North, the 
Chief-Justice of the United States in this case 
being the individual bomb-thrower. Already the 
legislative and executive Powers of Government 
had been wielded against free Kansas; next the 
third Power, the judicial, is brought to the front 
to do its part to the same end. 

III. 

The Dred Scott Decision. 

And now is delivered the third great blow of 
the decade in favor of the Slave-power — the decis- 
ion of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred 
Scott — the other two blows being the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise and the election of a 
Democratic President. Again Lincoln will be 
deeply aroused, and he will advance to meet 
Douglas as the defender of Judge Taney. 

Two days after the inauguration of Buchanan 
the decision was renderetl, which affirmed, among 
other matters, that the Missouri Compromise of 
1820 was unconstitutional. Congress having no 
power to pass it, or indexed to jjrohibit slavery in 
the Territories. Thus the chief doctrine of the 



382 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Republican party was put under the ban of law 
by the highest Tribunal of the land. Nay the 
doctrine of Popular Sovereignty was undermined 
by the decision, since the people of a Territory, 
just as little as Congress, could keep slavery out 
of the Territories. Still Douglas warmly sup- 
ported the decision and attempted to reconcile it 
with his peculiar doctrine, even putting on an air 
of triumph. Again the Northern Folk-Soul feels 
the stab and is roused to renewed anti-slavery ex- 
citertient. Douglas once more hastens home, and 
at the Capital of Illinois makes a speech, not only 
defending the decision, but also seeking to blacken 
all who oppose it as law-breakers and revolution- 
ists, as "enemies of the Constitution and of the 
supremacy of the laws." In this way he hopes to 
make the Republican party an illegal organiza- 
tion, which should not only not be tolerated but 
punished. 

Of course such a challenge calls out his antag- 
onist, Lincoln, who now comes to the front with a 
speech (Springfield, June 26th, 1857), replying to 
that of Douglas. Says he: "We think the Dred 
Scott decision erroneous. We know the court 
that made it has often overruled its own decis- 
ions, and we shall do what we can to have it 
overrule this." At the same, time "we offer no 
resistance to it. . . . Who resists it? Who 
has, in spite of the decision, declared Dred Scott 
free, and resisted the authority of the master 



- THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 383 

over him?" In all of which Lincoln shows him- 
self the institutional man who does not permit his 
moral indignation to turn him into a revolution- 
ist. The Dred Scott decision ought to be re- 
versed, but this must be done in a constitutional 
way. 

Douglas had tried in his speech to make it ap- 
pear that all who ciuestionecl the correctness of the 
decision, were resisting it by violence. At this 
point Lincoln turns Douglas against Douglas by 
showing that the latter had denounced the decis- 
ion of the Supreme Court in favor of the United 
States bank. "Again and again have I heard 
Judge Douglas denounce that bank decision and 
applaud General Jackson for disregarding it. It 
would be interesting for him to look over his re- 
cent speech and see how exactly his fierce philip- 
pics against us fall on his head." Here Lincoln 
is truly dialetical, he makes Douglas undo Douglas, 
and shows that the latter, judged by his present 
standard, once "fought in the ranks of the enemies 
of the Constitution," which is the reproach he tries 
to fasten upon Lincoln and others. 

With equal skill the speaker makes his antag- 
onist fight himself, and indeed annul himself in 
regard to the argument upon amalgation. Per- 
haps the most interesting paragraph of the speech 
now is that he singles out Douglas as his future 
competitor. "Three years and a half ago," says 
he, "Judge Douglas brought forward his famous 



384 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Nebraska bill. The country was at once in a 
blaze. . . Since then he has seen himself su- 
perseded in a Presidential nomination . . . 
and he has seen that rival constitutionally elected, 
not by the strength of his friends but by the di- 
vision of adversaries, being in a popular minority 
of nearly four hundred thousand votes. He has 
seen his chief aids in his own State, Shields and 
Richardson, politically speaking, successively tried, 
condemned, and executed, for an offense not their 
own, but his. And now he sees his own case stand- 
ing next on the docket for trial.'" 

Who is to be the prosecutor of Douglas in this 
great political trial? Evidently Lincoln himself, 
who now looks forward to it with a sort of tri- 
umphant delight. The allusion is to the contest 
for Senatorship which is to take place the coming 
year, before the People as Supreme Judge. The 
two life-long adversaries are to be brought to- 
gether in their i)ivotal contest, w^hose prize is loom- 
ing up hazily in the distance as something far 
greater than the Illinois Senatorship. Already 
Lincoln has aligned his party in the State, and 
put himself at its head ready for the charge. We 
can almost sec him in this speech flashing his 
sword and shaking it defiantly at his antagonist. 
He is now conscious that the Folk-Soul is with 
him, and that he is its voice and its leader against 
its favorite who has lost touch with it. 

Douy:las was well aware of the situation. The 



THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 385 

astute politician could not help socing which way 
the wind was blowing, and casting about to catch 
some of it in his own sails. Besides, he had his 
deep, though secret grudge against the Southern 
wing of his own party which had so ungratefully 
thrown him overboard at Cincinnati. He must 
also have seen by his visit to Illinois that the Dred 
Scott decision was not going to destroy the Re- 
publican party, but to nerve it to new and 
stronger endeavor. The opportunity comes not 
only for paying back an old score, but for adjust- 
ing himself anew with the North, which he had so 
deeply alienated. But that comes later. 

It should be stated that Douglas in this Spring- 
field speech, distinctly enounces that which was 
afterward known as his Freeport doctrine, and 
which is supposed to have lost him the South. He 
had the very difficult task of reconciling his 
Squatter Sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. 
"A master's right to his slave in that Territory 
(Kansas) continues in full force under the guaran- 
tees of the Constitution, and cannot be divested 
or alienated by an act of Congress;" still, in spite 
of this "it necessarily remains a barren and worth- 
less right unless sustained, protected, and enforced 
by appropriate police regulations and local legisla- 
tion prescribing adequate remedies for its viola- 
tion." And such legislation "depends upon the 
people of the Territory," and so it comes that 
"the great principle of Popular Sovereignty is sus- 

25 



386 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

tained and firmly established by this decision" of 
Judge Taney, who undoubtedly intended just the 
opposite. 

Of course the true inference here is just the re- 
verse of that which Douglas draws, and Lincoln 
grips him in the retort that such a doctrine must 
hold ''that a thing may lawfully be driven away 
from a place where it has a lawful right to be." 
Douglas felt that he must keep the Anti-Nebraska 
democrats in his fold if he ever wished to return 
to the United States Senate. So he quiets their 
apprehensions by telling them that the Dred Scott 
decision is good law, but it can be easily circum- 
vented by my little device known as Squatter 
Sovereignty, which Lincoln calls a' humbug. The 
question will arise. Did Douglas believe his own 
reasoning? Certainly he affirms a contradiction: 
the right of the formal law to unquestioned obe- 
dience and the right to make it inoperative and 
null. So Douglas has primarily breached himself; 
his own doctrine is dual, having a Northern and a 
Southern side; in Kansas it favors the Slave-State, 
yet at the same time it gives a quick turn and 
favors the Free-State. Surely Douglas has become 
double like the Double Nation; his very conscious- 
ness is twofold and contradictory. Thus he seems 
a kind of embodied (kiplicity, havhig been assimi- 
lated to that Janus-faced God of his, Squatter Sov- 
ereignty. 

By way of contrast we can sec Lincoln now at 



DEMOCRACY BREACHED. 387 

one with himself, having risen out of his duahsm 
through the long discipline of his Subsidence al- 
ready portrayed. But Douglas has really breached 
himself in his support of the Dred Scott decision; 
behold Lincoln, his antitype, standing up at 
Springfield and pointing out the fact to the people. 
But Douglas cannot stop , with this act, so here fol- 
lows the next. 

IV. 

Democracy breached. 

Who did it? Douglas. He had already caused 
the great breach between the North and the South 
by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; he now 
breaches the Democratic party itself, hitherto 
united, calling forth in it a Northern wing and a 
Southern. Thus disunion has entered and split 
the party of the Double Union, which means at 
bottom national Disunion. 

The occasion was again Kansas, upon which the 
Administration and the South, encouraged by the 
Dred Scott decision, resolved afresh to foist sla- 
very against the will of the people. The Lecomp- 
ton scheme was hatched for this purpose. Doug- 
las saw his chance and declared his o})])osition 
already at his home in Illinois. When he reached 
Washington for the opening of Congress in De- 
cember, 1857, he went to the President, to whom 
he declared that he should denounce the scheme 
in the Senate. Buchanan in a fit of wrath rose 



3^8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

and said: "Mr. Douglas, I desire you to remember 
that no Democrat ever differed from an adminis- 
tration of his own choice without being crushed. 
Beware of the fate of Talhnadge and Rives." 
Whereat Douglas also rose in opposition and re- 
plied: "Mr. President, I wish you to remember 
that General Jackson is dead." A piercing and 
defiant response, with a sting in it too, which lay 
in the contemptuous contrast between the weakest- 
willed President that was ever in the White House, 
and the strongest-willed one, yea sometimes head- 
strong. On the 9th of December Douglas backed 
up his words outside by an equally daring speech 
in the Senate, in which speech he seems to see for 
the first time the real situation in Kansas. Great 
praise he won from the Republicans, especially 
from the Eastern Press, which began to hail him 
as the new leader. But Douglas still was Douglas 
with his Popular Sovereignty and his non-inter- 
vention of Congress. Says he: "If Kansas wants 
a Slave-State Constitution, she has a right to it; 
if she wants a Free-State Constitution she has a 
right to it; it is none of my business which way 
the slavery clause is decided. / care not wliether 
it is voted down or voted up." 

The attitude taken in this last sentence was the 
grand fatality of Douglas. On account of his in- 
difference he became equally objectionable to the 
men of conviction both in the North and the 
South, to those who tlisbelieved in slavery as well 



m 



DEMOCRACY BREACHED. 389 

as to those who beheved in it. And there were 
many Douglas Democrats, especially in the 
North, who did not relish such cynicism on the 
great moral question of the age. Particularly in 
Kansas would such an expression fall with a 
shock, since at this time a majority of the fighting 
Free-State men were Douglas Democrats. Imagine 
their chill when they hear that what they care 
most about, their leader does not care about at 
all. Really has not Douglas eliminated himself 
from the grand struggle of the time? He does 
not care whether this Federal Union shall be pro- 
ductive of Free-States or Slave-States — the very 
problem which Civilization or the World-Spirit has 
called up for solution, and which is fermenting 
deeply in the Folk-Soul. At this weakest spot in 
Douglas Lincoln will not fail to thrust his spear 
with telling effect before the assembled People in 
the coming debate. 

It is evident that three parties have begun to 
appear and are putting themselves in shape for 
the future. These we may set down as follows: 

1. The Southern (Democratic) which says more 
Slave-States ; the Nation must be Slave-State pro- 
cl.icing also. 

2. The Northern (Republican) which says no 
more Slave-States ; the Nation nmst be Free-State 
producing only. 

3. Douglas (Democratic) which says the Nation 
may be either, or rather should be neither ; let the 



390 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

people of the given territory settle the matter 
among themselves, and let the Nation dismiss the 
vexatious question. Thus Douglas tries to avoid 
the world-historical issue of the age, or perchance 
to circumvent the World-Spirit by a political de- 
vice, the cunning fellow! Lincoln, on the con- 
trary, will voice that World-Spirit to the yeomanry 
of Illinois, so that the whole Nation will hear it, 
in its judgment of Douglas. 

It is evident that the Northern (Republican) 
and the Southern (Democratic) parties have one 
important tenet in common: both maintain the 
central supervision of Congress over the territo- 
ries. Douglas on the contrary would cut off all 
intervention from the National Legislature; thus 
he practically denies the Union to be State-pro- 
ducing, and does away with its genetic function,, 
really the deepest of all its functions. The scat- 
tered settlers or squatters are supposed to be alone 
capable of State- making, that is, of the supreme 
governmental act, and not Congress, though this 
is often imagined to be the collective i)olitical 
wisdom of all the States. Against such an abdication 
of national power and duty, both the anti-slavery 
and the pro-slavery parties took decided position. 
But with his device as a weapon Douglas has 
breached his own party, the Democratic, into a 
Northern and Southern half, truly a feat of gigan- 
tic miglitiness. 

Let it be said, however, that this separation lay 



DEMOCRACY BREACHED. 391 

deep in the party itself and also in the man him- 
self. The Democracy of the Free-States could 
hartlly be called pro-slavery, and the time had 
come when slavery was demanding a belief in itself 
as morally right. It would no longer endure in- 
difference even, but required a confession of faith 
in its eternal justice and goodness from the party 
which is supported. Herein lurked the possibility 
of a breach between the Northern and Southern 
Democracy. 

And now the breacher appears with his doctrine 
of "Don't care." But the deeper fact is that this 
breacher Douglas is himself breached by his own 
principle of Popular Sovereignty, whose object is 
to balk the very law which he saj^s must be 
obeyed . He decries any man who denounces the 
Dred Scott decision as a revolutionist, but he tells 
how to thwart it by his doctrine. Thus Douglas 
is inwardly dual like his party; indeed he realizes 
his own dualism in his party, and makes it, as it 
were, an image of himself. Yea, the Nation shows 
a similar scission, so that Douglas now is in a pro- 
found sense the National representative of the 
time. Herein Lincoln is again his other Self, his 
antitype, who having made himself a unity within 
out of dualism, is to make the Nation a unity, and 
even is to unite Douglas, who is at last to be re- 
deemed from his scission. 

But not yet for several years. Douglas is still 
in the height of his breaching period, and has not 



392 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

been halted; he is the very genius of division, 
having divided North and South into two antago- 
nistic lialves of the whole Union by his repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise, and now he has divided 
his own party, the Democratic into a Northern 
and Southern branch. But just see the Titanic 
audacity of the breacher ! he has actually begun to 
breach his opponents, the Republicans. Who can 
stop him? 

V. 

Republicanism rot breached. 

It has been already noted that Douglas began to 
break with his party on the issue of the Lecomp- 
ton Constitution, and to vote with the Republi- 
cans in favor of free Kansas during the Congres- 
sional session of 1857-8. He even voted against 
the English bill, a sort of hybrid Democratic meas- 
ure which sought to purchase from the Kansans 
their Free-State principle by an offer of immediate 
Stateliood and by a gift of land. This was the 
supreme point of his open approach to Republi- 
canism . And secretly he was at this time consult- 
ing with the leading members of the Republican 
party in Congress and winning them to his view. 
His line of argument seems to have run in this 
wise: "Do you not see the real effect of my Repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise? All the territories 
south of that line are now ojien to freedom, not 
merely those north of it, like Kansas. The 



REPUBLICANISM NOT BREACHED 393 

fact is, I am the true practical Republican, who 
has really taken away from the Southerners the 
lands which would otherwise have fallen to their 
share. And many of them see it and are denounc- 
ing me in the Senate. Still I must not quit my 
party, but must stay in it and keep my followers 
together; thus I can do more effectual service." 
The argument was valid. Douglas had come to 
see that the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
was turning out just the opposite of what he and 
its original supporters intended. He had began to 
glimpse the irony of the World-Spirit of which he, 
as well as the Republican Senators, had hitherto 
been the sport, being led to promote the reverse of 
what they had at first purposed. For Douglas 
and his pro-slavery supporters in the Repeal of 
the ^lissouri Compromise had done that which 
undid them, and on the other hand the great anti- 
slavery orators, Chase, Sumner, Seward had bit- 
terly assailed and voted against the very act 
which conferred the greatest boon upon them and 
their party. Douglas now begins to see — he did 
not see at the start — -the })cculiar contradictory 
working of his own bill, as it turns out an anti- 
slavery insteatl of a pro-slavery measure. More- 
over he is going to take the credit for its secret 
anti-slaveryism, having been shamefully cast oflf 
by the Southerners in the Democratic Convention 
of 1850, in spite of his blandishments and services. 
So Douglas has the insight to catch the drift of 



394 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

the time, to feel the subtle irony of the World- 
Spirit, in accord with which he must make a new 
adjustment. 

We cannot, however, believe that Douglas ever 
intended to become a Republican. But in the 
new tm*n of political events, he thought he saw a 
way of attaching the Republicans or a part of 
them, to the tail of his Presidential kite, as Lincoln 
said. He knew that through the Democracy 
united, he could never be chief magistrate. So he 
has breached his own party; and if he can breach 
the Republican party and get one portion of it, he 
may be able to weld it to his Democratic frag- 
ment and float on this new co-alition into the Pres- 
idency. There can be little doubt that the su- 
preme political aim of Douglas in 1858 was to 
breach the Republican party. We have already 
marked his peculiar demiurgic power of sundering 
what lay opposed to him during this period. Can 
he rend Republicanism as he has rent the Democ- 
racy? This we shall find to be his deepest motive 
in the great Debate with Lincoln in 1858; if he 
can cleave atwain these new foes, he sees himself 
riding triumphantly into the coming Senatorship, 
and why not into the Presidency? 

And the likelihood seems not remote, 'for see 
what a spell the enchanter has cast upon the eyes 
of champions hitherto most hostile to him and his 
doctrine! The whole bottom of the Rojjublican 
party threatens to drop out, and a i)ortion of it 



REPUBLIC AX ISM XOT BREACHED. 395 

does get seriously breached by the subtle arts of 
the demonic breacher of political parties, Stephen 
A. Douglas, now at the flower of his negative 
might. In the East and in Congress a number of 
influential Republicans thought of taking him uj) 
as their leader, and of adopting his doctrine. 
Prominent newspapers started to agitate in the 
same direction. It was suggested that the Re- 
publicans of Illinois help re-elect Douglas as Sen- 
ator in 1858. Particularly Greeley in his New 
York Tribune advocated this scheme, which meant 
an abandonment of the Republican principle. 
Seward probably leaned the same way for a time, 
though the dexterous politician kept shy of any 
public utterance. His supposed organ, the New 
York Times, was, however, outspoken in favor of 
the surrender. This was probably the most dan- 
gerous moment in the entire existence of the Re- 
publican party, which had fought the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise, had outlived the defeat of 
185G, had risen up to new life under the stagger- 
ing blow of the Dred Scott decision. Now the 
arch-divider, Douglas, has gotten somehow inside 
the organization and is preparing to divide it as 
he has divided his own party recently, and has 
divided his country into two antagonistic sections 
by his deed of 1854. 

Will he succeed? Just at this critical moment 
steps forward Abraham Lincoln in the Conv(>ntion 
of Illinois Republicans assembled at S[)ringfield 



396 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

and shouts No ! in commanding tones which soon 
find an echo throughout the North. In his speech 
there made (June IGth, 1858), he exposes the vital 
difference between Repubhcanism and Douglas- 
ism. No "don't care" policy for us here in this 
State; and he winds up with a lofty exhortation: 
"Our cause must then be intrusted to and con- 
ducted by its own undoubted friends — those whose 
hands are free and whose hearts are in the work, 
who do care for the result." 

His words were backed enthusiastically by the 
Convention, which nominated him as the Republi- 
can candidate for United States Senator in the 
coming campaign against Douglas. In a number 
of respects this act of Lincoln and of his faithful 
supporters was epoch-making. It saved the party 
from a split, for gradually the Easterners began 
to see their own folly and to fall into line. Even 
■Greeley sullenly yielded, though it left him in a 
sulk which he never got over during the rest of 
Lincoln's career, not even during the latter's Pres- 
idency. Indeed Greeley gave himself a blow from 
which he never afterwards fully recovered. But 
the main fact is that this episode transfers the 
seat of authority in the Republican party to the 
West, which, under Lincoln's leadership, had re- 
fused to be cajoled into the Armida palace of 
the subtle magician, there to be blown to 
pieces. Lincoln, though unconscious prol)ably of 
any such purpose, had made himself the national 



REPUBLICANISM NOT BREACHED. 397 

leader, having vindicated the world-historical mis- 
sion of the party, which the Eastern branch, or a 
leading portion of it, was willing to sacrifice on 
the plea of expediency. Lincoln reaffirms that the 
Union must be Free-State producing only — which 
Douglas opposed to the last. 

And now the two Giants are lined up for the 
conflict on the prairies of Illinois in the presence 
of the people, who are to decide the issue which is 
really their own. It should be noted that it takes 
the form of a Presidential rather than a Senatorial 
contest; both Lincoln and Douglas are practically 
nominated beforehand by their respective parties; 
the State Legislature will indeed do the choosing 
of the Senator, but it will have hardly more free- 
dom of choice than the Electoral College in choos- 
ing the President. It is, therefore, a sort of pre- 
liminary Presidential election even in form as well 
as in significance; though confined to one State, it 
is enacted before the whole United States, and is 
felt eveiy where to be a national matter. No other 
Senatorial canvas in American History approaches 
it in interest and importance, and no debate in the 
Senate itself by the great orators of the old order 
ever had such a weighty theme or such a far- 
reaching purport. 

So we behold our two life-long antitypes in tlie 
bloom of their powers, enter upon a fresh contest, 
appealing to the Folk-Soul in })ersonal presence, 
and trying to win its suffrage. Each is seeking 



398 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

the Senatorship as the immediate prize; but really 
each is striving to be the voice of the future, of 
the Nation's destiny, of the World-Spirit. Which 
will win that far higher guerdon whose bestowal 
will elevate its recipient into that other Senate 
composed of the supreme Great Men of Universal 
History? The Folk-Soul is now called upon to 
choose, not merely a Senator of the United States, 
but a much more adequate and exalted represent- 
ative of itself, nothing less than a mediator be- 
tween itself and the World-Spirit. Lincoln again 
loses the chance of going to Washington as law- 
maker in the Upper House, but wins the loftier 
position. And now let us turn to him and listen, 
for he is about to speak the pivotal word of his 
whole career, and indeed of his Age. 

VI. 

Prelude of the Lincolniad. 

If it were possible in these days to sing an epos 
with Lincoln as hero, it miglit well begin at 
the latter's contest with Douglas for the national 
Senatorship of IlHiiois. The Muse, leaving to one 
side all the less important preliminaries and prep- 
arations, would then plunge into the thick of 
things {in medias res), or rather would intone 
the central struggle, typical, yea creative of those 
which follow. Such a Lincolniad, having gotten 
fairly under way, could not well stop till the 



PRELUDE OF THE LIXCOLXIAD. 399 

death of the hero. It would start, if not with a 
famous quarrel, at least with a famous debate be- 
tween the two leaders on the Northern side, as the 
Iliad opens with a furious contest of speeches on 
the Greek side between its two leaders, Achilles 
and Agamemnon. But as before those divided 
Greeks rises the far deeper problem of the capture^ 
of Troy upon which they will be united, so be- 
fore these debating Americans on the Prairie 
comes the outlook upon a far deeper problem, 
nothing less than the preservation of their na- 
tional Union, in regard to which they will be 
united. In both songs, however, American as well 
as Greek, Helen will be finally restored, but only 
after untold woes, in which many a soul is sent to 
Hades, and the will of Zeus is accomplished. 

The life of the modern Great Man, however, 
calls for a literary vehicle different from the old 
epos, though the main function of the latter was 
also to set forth the pivotal deeds of the hero of 
his People. But the Iliad is not a biography of 
Achilles, even if its object be to give the weightiest 
moment of his career, and to portray that 
mighty inner change which makes him truly he- 
roic, and concentrates into one brilliant action 
lasting a few days the worth of his whole life. 
Our biographic Lincolniad moves «ot that way, it 
seeks to bring to light the long, dark, fameless 
evolution of a career till it bursts forth into its 
supreme deed, which is thus in a measure ac- 



400 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

counted for, being seen in its growth from germ to 
bloom. To be sure, the old epos did not fail to 
throw irregular glances back into the early life of 
its hero, and the Iliad in one long scene intro- 
duces Phoenix, primal pedagogue to the boy 
Achilles, who is thereby briefly seen in his heroic 
budding. 

In the Lincolniad also, as here marked out, 
there is a prelude or proem which is spoken by the 
hero himself, and which forecasts the entire action 
to the close. It thus gleams with a golden poetic 
vein of prophecy, which is not merely the fiction 
of the poet telling in advance the course of fabled 
adventures, but the man of the deed himself 
voicing the next great reality of the World's His- 
tory. To our mind this Prelude is the weightiest 
word ever spoken by any American man, of what- 
ever station; very brief it is, a single small para- 
graph, but it is freighted with the burden of a 
new-born world. 

Lincoln has now reached the point when he 
must give utterance to the Idea which has been 
fermenting so long in his soul. Already he has 
often expressed it in private to his friends: This 
Nation cannot exist half-slave and half-free. In 
1856 it is reported that he ])roposed to proclaim 
the doctrine in a speech at Bloomington, but was 
dissuaded by his conservative friend, Judge 
Dickey. But in 1858 he is the chosen leader of 
his party, and he resolves to base his contest with 



PRELUDE OF THE UNCOLNIAD. 401 

Douglas upon what he deems the deepest pohtical 
fact of the time. His opportunity comes when he 
has to address the Convention which has nomi- 
nated him for Senator against Douglas (June 
16th, 1885). Moreover, the first paragraph which 
contains those memorable sentences already al- 
luded to as the Prelude to the truly heroic part of 
his career, shows Lincoln at his highest, when he 
gives voice to the future and unconsciously out- 
lines his own supreme vocation in the coming con- 
flict. The whole paragraph may well be cited 
(with some parenthetic comments), as the Prelude 
to the Lincolniad now starting, if not to sing, at 
least to speak in an exalted, prophetic strain what 
the Gods have decreed. 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen of tJie Convention: 
If we could first know where we are and whither 
we are tending, we could better judge what to do 
and how to do it. (The stress of the speech as a 
whole is to indicate whither we, the People, are 
tending in the slavery question). We arc now far 
into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with 
the avowed object and confident promise of put- 
ting an end to slavery agitation (the policy of re- 
pealing the Missouri Compromise). Under the 
operation of that policy, that agitation has not 
only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. 
(Whither is it tending?) In my opinion it will not 
cease till a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 
(A glimpse or presentiment, one thinks, of the 

26 



402 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

approaching Civil War). 'A house divided against 
itself cannot stand.' (This popular proverb has 
given title to the speech, as it sums up the crisis) . 

I BELIEVE THIS GOVERNMENT CANNOT ENDURE 
PERMANENTLY HALF-SLAVE AND HALF-FREE. (The 

pointed application of the foregoing ]3roverb to 
the special case in hand. This piercing statement 
of the political situation expressed the rising con- 
viction of the North, and has since been adopted 
by the People as its own very utterance of itself. 
In this single sentence we may hear the World- 
Spirit speaking through Abraham Lincoln to the 
Folk-Soul, which is getting ready to accept it as 
its own, and to carry it out, for there is in it an 
implied command to overcome the division so that 
the House may stand. For listen:) I do not ex- 
pect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect 
the House to fall, but I do expect it will cease 
to be divided. It will become all one thing or 
all the other. (Thus under the bitter division of 
the time Lincoln sees the trend toward unity, 
toward the new Union which will eradicate the 
acrid and ever-irritating dualism between Slave- 
State and Free-State). Either the opponents of 
slavery will arrest the further spread of it and 
place it where the Public Mind shall rest in 
the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinc- 
tion; or its advocates will push it forward till it 
shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as 
well as new. North as well as South." 



PRELUDE OF THE LIXCOLXIAD. 403 

Such is what we deem the Prehide of the Lin- 
colniad, or of the Epos of Lincoln, not fabulous 
by any means but historic, enacted through the 
deed itself and recorded not in Hellenic Olympian 
ideality, but in American terrestrial reahty. Still 
this Epos of the solid fact bears the impress of a 
poetic whole, being preluded by a prophetic strain 
which prefigures Lincoln's work in its full circuit, 
till the assassin's bullet closes his career, and his 
task of making this Nation "become all one 
thing" and not the other thing, is practically com- 
plete. The half-and-halfness of the old order 
must end, and end in the right way; and when it 
ends, Lincoln himself ends with it, and the Epos 
concludes in the death of individual hero, alas! 
but in the triumph of his cause, and in the ful- 
filment of the prophetic Prelude 

Certain curious facts concerning this epochal 
speech have been handed down by Plerndon, who 
was in the same office with Lincoln at this time. 
He wrote it "on stray envelopes and scraps of 
paper, as ideas suggested themselves, putting 
them into that miscellaneous and convenient re- 
ceptacle, his hat. As the Convention drew near, 
he copied the whole on connected sheets, carefully 
revising every line and sentence, and fastened 
them together for convenience during the delivery 
of the speech and for publication." So we im- 
agine our Lincoln walking the street with the 
great problem of the time always seething in him; 



404 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART SECOND. 

suddenly there bubbles up from the unseen depths 
the right thought already clothed in its happiest 
expression; he stops suddenly just there as if 
halted by his own Genius, and claps his hand into 
his pocket for an old letter or blank leaf of paper 
on which he transcribes his inspiration, word for 
word, as whispered directly f'"om the lips of the 
Muse. Then behold him taking off that high- 
crowned hat of his and depositing the precious 
sentence safely within it, which, we recollect, was 
formerly his Post Office at New Salem. Goethe 
once wished for a leathern jerkin on which he 
might inscribe any sudden verse sent down to him 
from Parnassus, while he was moving about in 
prosaic occupations. Of the two devices we would 
vote for Lincoln's. 

Far more significant is the record which Hern- 
don has handed down concerning the immediate 
reception of the doctrine by Lincoln's Springfield 
political associates. "Before delivering his speech, 
he invited a dozen or so of his friends over to the 
library of the State House, where he read and 
submitted it to them. After the reading, he asked 
each man for his opinion." Not one endorsed it 
except n(Tndon himself, who, in a sudden burst 
of prophetic exaltation, declared: "Lincoln, de- 
liver that speech as read, and it will make you 
President." So Herndon reports himself foretell- 
ing — which report, of course, rt^aches the reader 
some years after the marvelous fulfilment. There 



PRELUDE OF THE LIXCOLXIAD. 405 

can be no doubt, however, that Herndon strongly 
backed Lincohi, who felt in his law-partner and 
intimate companion a true part of himself, and 
yet only a part. For Herndon, though of South- 
ern extraction, was an abolitionist after the pat- 
tern of Theodore Parker of Boston, and hence rep- 
resented the moral opposition to slavery, very- 
intense but one-sided. On the other hand most 
of the friends of Lincoln were conservative, and 
put stress upon the institutional element. Now 
Lincoln had, we hold, both sides in him, the moral 
and institutional, and also their reconciliation, as 
far as this was possible under the old political 
order. But likewise he had both sides outside of 
him, and around him in two sets of warm friends 
and supporters, yet always clashing with each 
other in his presence. Lincoln saw his political 
problem incarnate before him in the conflict of 
these two sets of his own followers. The whole 
Republican party had the same inner conflict, and 
would have fallen asunder unless the moral and 
the institutional elements of the opposition to 
slavery had been reconciled in a common princi- 
ple, but above all, in a common leader, who knew 
both elements well, and felt both deeply. Hern- 
don had his decided place in Lincoln's develop- 
ment as the ever-present moral protest of the time 
against the black wrong, and did not fail to keep 
this side of the (juestion alive in the sympathetic 
soul of his friend. 



406 ABRAHAM LINCOLN —PART SECOND. 

Lincoln rising from his seat, replies to his ob- 
jecting counselors: "Friends, this thing has been 
retarded long enough. The time has come when 
these sentiments should be uttered ; and if it is de- 
creed that I should go down because of this 
speech, then let me go down linked to the truth — 
let me die in the advocacy of what is just and 
right." Recollect that the chief declaration is 
that this dual Nation must now become single in 
its State-producing power. Again says Lincoln 
somewhat defiantly to a protesting friend: "If I 
had to draw a pen across my record aixl erase my 
whole life from sight, and I had one poor gift or 
choice left as to what I should save from the 
wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to 
the world unerased" (Herndon and Weik's Lincoln, 
pp. 65-70). 

The essence of the speech is the Prelude, which 
has the smiting trip-hammer sentences, whose blows 
forged the shape of the future . Its similarity to 
Seward's "irrepressible conflict" has been often re- 
marked . Did either draw from the other? It so 
happens that Seward's Rochester speech, from 
which those words are taken, was tlelivercd Oc- 
tober 25th, 1858, more than four months after the 
preluding speech of Lincoln at Springfield. More- 
over Seward was suspectetl of silently favoring 
Douglasism for a while, till he rather suddenly' 
woke up from his reticence. At the time Sowar. 1 
was a far more prominent man than Lincohi, 



PRELUDE OF THE LIXCOLXIAD. 407 

still, as a good politician and as a Presidential as- 
pirant, he must have kept his ear open to the 
breezes from the Western prairie, and they would 
have borne to him in four months many echoes of 
Lincoln's stirring Prelude. Then we must recol- 
lect that the last of the seven joint debates between 
Lincoln and Douglas, which resounded through the 
whole nation, continually reverberating that Pre- 
lude, took place on October loth, ten days before 
Seward's speech at Rochester. It is highly prob- 
able that Seward not only knew well the declara- 
tions of Lincoln's Prelude, but was roused from 
his political stupor of Douglasism, which infected 
New York and all the East, by the new national 
prominence of Lincoln, who has suddenly become 
a Presidential possibility . 

So much for the Prelude to the Lincolniad which 
has proved itself to have a world-historical import, 
being the prophetic utterance of a great epoch . 
The word of it seems to be marching forthright to 
the deed with a dizzying swiftness ; in less than a 
decade this nation is no longer half slave half free . 
The prophecy is going to be fulfilled with far 
greater rapidity than Lincoln at first could have 
dreamed. And now let it be noted that the an- 
titypal counterpart, Douglas, has also his Prelude 
in due symmetry; the twinned Dioscuri of the 
Prairie, though at opposite poles, cannot separate, 
indeed cannot do without each other. But the 
preluding strain of Douglas will have in it no 



408 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

deep-seeing, prophetic glance ; on the contrary he 
will denounce Lincoln's words of foresight with no 
.little asperity, stoning the prophet with hard 
accusations of fomenting ill feeling between North 
and South, and even disunion. 

Douglas reached his home in Chicago from 
Washington, and made his opening speech on July 
9th, 1858, not a month after Lincoln's nomination 
for Senator, when the latter uttered his far- 
reaching Prelude. In this speech Douglas shows 
a complacent mood, a happy state of self-glorifica- 
tion, and seems to forecast his coming triumph. 
His first point is his great victory over his own 
Democratic Administration, which tried to force 
the Lecompton Constitution upon the people of 
Kansas whether they wanted it or not — a com- 
plete victory for Popular Sovereignty. But he 
claims an equally great victory over the Republi- 
cans in Congress since they voted for the Critten- 
den-Montgomery bill, which permitted Kansas to de- 
cide for itself whether it would have slavery or free- 
dom. This bill, however, was rejected in the Sen- 
ate, though it passed the House by the vote of 
Republicans, who well knew tl;at in this particu- 
lar case the Kansans, having fought valiantly for 
their freedom some three years, would at the least 
chance vote as they fought. But Douglas thinks 
that the Republicans have come, or will soon 
come over to his side permanently, dropping their 
principle of the exclusion of sla\'ery from the terri- 



PRELUDE OF THE LINCOLN IAD. 409 

tories for his doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. 
And there is no doubt that in the Eastern States 
he is playing havoc, he is breaching the Repub- 
lican party. Can he do it in Illinois? At this 
pivotal moment Lincoln meets him, meets him in 
the breach and begins the combat. 

In this same preluding speech of his, Douglas 
pays some attention to Lincoln personally, whom 
the Repubhcans of Illinois have nominated to be 
"my successor in the Senate." Courteously, but 
somewhat condescendingly, if we catch his tone 
aright, he pictures his antagonist: "I take great 
pleasure in saying that I have known, personally 
and intimately, for about a quarter of a century, 
the worthy gentleman who has been nominated 
for my place, and I will say that I regard him as 
a kind, amiable and intelligent gentleman, a good 
citizen and an honorable opponent; and whatever 
issue I may have with him will be of principle and 
not involving personalities." This is all very gra- 
cious, but the note will change before the debate 
is over. 

Douglas proceeds to tackle Lincoln's preluding 
speech before the Republican Convention, which 
he sees to be the pivotal uttci'ance of the cam- 
paign, calling it "a speech well prepared and care- 
fully written." First Douglas assails the half-and- 
half doctrine, which he deems a call to "a war of 
sections, a war of the North against the South." 
Then he pronounces strongly against Lincoln's 



410 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

view of the Dred Scott decision. Both these 
points will be often reiterated in the coming 
Debate, with keen retorts of the contestants. 

But what a difference in the two Preludes! Lin- 
coln's is a prophecy proclaiming the one homo- 
geneous Nation of the future, prefiguring the 
movement of the Age, voicing the very decree of 
the World-Spirit. The Prelude of Douglas rises 
to no such lofty outlook, but simply reaffirms the 
old Double Nation, whose doom has been pro- 
nounced in many ways, but in the most impressive 
way by Douglas himself through his repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise. To be sure Douglas in 
1854 did not intend any such Last Judgment of 
the old order, nevertheless it lay deeply ensconced 
in his pivotal act, and now behold it dragged 
forth to light and uttered in smiting words by 
Lincoln as the grand Prelude to his and the Na- 
tion's coming World-historical deed. 

But did Douglas remain wholly insensible to its 
deep significance? Again and again he assailed 
in the debate this Prelude, trying to divert it or 
rather to pervert it to something else; but he only 
caused its repeated assertion by Lincoln with 
fresh illustration and renewed energy. Did not 
Douglas also secretly feel its power, as he sat there 
on the stand near Lincoln re-iterating and enforcing 
in exalted speech that preluding [)roi)hecy as the 
very soul of the entire contest? We hold that he 
could not altogether keep out of the magnetic 



PRELUDE OF THE LIXCOLNIAD. 411 

current of inspired conviction which animated the 
speech and the form of his stalwart antagonist. 
And then another and mightier phenomenon kept 
recurring in the presence of Douglas. Standing 
there on the prairie in the sun and looking up 
into his face he witnessed the Folk-Soul itself 
embodied in thousands and thousands, and 
heard its tremendous response to Lincoln's 
words, which it adopted as its own true ut- 
terance then and there. Unforgetable must 
that experience have been by the Little Giant, 
for he could not help seeing the most unique 
and transcendent fact of the whole campaign, if 
not of the time. What was that? He saw Lin- 
coln in the very act of mediating the World-Spirit 
with the Folk-Soul, and voicing the command of 
the former to the latter, which thereby became 
conscious of that command as its own deepest 
purpose, and began to get ready to obey it at 
any sacrifice. Douglas and his followers being 
also present in the hidden but mighty stream, 
could not help feeling the "irresistible Power" 
which Lincoln had evoked, and which he also de- 
scribed to his hearers already under its influence. 
The Deniocratic opposition and its leader Douglas, 
listening to the voice of Lincoln perchance un- 
willingly, cannot avoid hearing the great new 
behest of the Age, and they too quite uncon- 
sciously, yea almost in spite of themselves, arc 
getting ready to obey it at the call of this same 



412 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Lincoln, and even now arc secretly aligning them- 
selves under him for the other and mightier 
conflict. 

But that is not yet here, though on the way, 
while the two Giants are at hand and have act- 
ually begun their Nation-shaking encounter, which 
must next be told. 

VII. 

Gigantomachia. 
So in our modern prosaic day we are to witness 
an actual Battle of Giants on the unelevated, 
rather unpoetic prairie of Illinois. Two Giants, 
the Little and the Big — so called in popular 
phrase — are going to grapple with each other in an 
Olympian wrestle, not so much of brawn as of 
brain. Strangely an old fable of the ages seems to 
be new-born among an immythical folk, and is to 
be re-enacted with fresh life and in modern fash- 
ion. Not now will the Giants war against the 
Gods (as old Hesiod puts it) in the twilight of time; 
the Gods are indeed dethroned, so that the Giants, 
being two, have to fight each other for the divine 
heritage. It is indeed a contest of endurance, yea 
of physical endurance; but in its supreme scope 
it is a contest of principles. Each of the Giants 
is a voice calling to the People who are to choose 
one of them as leader for the yet deeper and more 
desperate struggle which is coming. The Folk- 
Soul in the depths of its brooding nuiy be con- 



GIGAXTOMACHIA. , 413 

ceived as asking after each trial: Which of the 
twain speaks to me the word of the age, of civili- 
zation, of Universal History — which is bringing 
the message of the World-Spirit? The question 
cannot be fully answered at once, not this year, nor 
the next; but after two years' meditation the Folk- 
Soul will be ready to say which of the two Illinois 
Giants is its choice for leader. 

Let it be noted at the start that Lincoln was 
quite conscious of the vast audience which he was 
addressing. Says he in the Quincy debate: "I 
was aware when it was first agreed that Judge 
Douglas and I were to have these seven joint dis- 
cussions, that they were the successive acts of a ' 
drama — perhaps I should say to be enacted not 
merely in the face of audiences Hke this, but in the 
face of a Nation, and to some extent by my rela- 
tion to him and not from anything in myself, in 
the face of the World." A drama he conceives it, 
with two interlocutors playing the parts, which 
have an interest and significance not only national 
but world-historical. It is for this reason in the 
main that he changes his style, largely leaving 
out his anecdotal vein, his mimicry, his fantastic 
humor. He was speaking more to readers than to 
listeners; he knew that the vast majority of his 
audience would quietly peruse the printed page 
and weigh its propositions far beyond the peri- 
phery of the spoken word, without the personal 
charm of voice, manner, gesture. What he said 



414 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. . 

must stand the test of cold type and of colder rea- 
son, a thousand miles away and more. He docs 
not propose, therefore, merely to entertain his 
present hearers, and he will eliminate as far as 
possible the local and transitory elements of the 
contest, even if a good deal of the worthless slag 
of the day's politics still lies imbedded among the 
priceless gems of his oratory. 

Lincoln is also aware of something stronger than 
himself, which he simply voices, yea, stronger 
than the People, whom it stirs up in a mighty agi- 
tation, allowing no repose on the slavery ques- 
tion. What is ''that irresistible Power which, 
for fifty years, has shaken the Government and 
agitated the People," and which Douglas thinks 
we can stop "by not talking about it?" But the 
'Tower irresistible" convulses to the center the 
religious organization as well as the political; look 
at the division in the churches on account of 
slavery. It is verily "a mighty deep-seated Power 
that somehow operates on the minds of men, ex- 
citing and stirring them up in every avenue of 
society." Mark that the People are in the clutch 
of greater Power than themselves, which is giving 
them no peace of mind. So Lincoln, catching a 
glimpse of- the World-Spirit, voices it to the Folk- 
Soul in which it is instinctively working, and which 
thus begins to become conscious of its new World- 
historical vocation. Moreover, the People can 
have no allayment from this awful fever of agita- 



GIGAXTOMACHIA. 415 

tion till thc}^ can find repose in the belief of the 
ultimate extinction of slavery. Such is Lincoln's 
repeated statement of the remedy, which, however, 
he thinks will be a good while in coming. And 
there will be no war. Lincoln clearly discerns 
"the irresistible Power,'' and sees its scope, but its 
time and manner he does not foresee. Nor is it 
necessary. The decree of the ^Yorld-Spirit he cer- 
tainly hears, and declares its irresistil^ility; place, 
time, and circumstance cannot fail at its bidding. 
We have already noted the irony of the World- 
Spirit, when its opponents bring about the very 
thing which they resist with all their might. Such 
an ironical element has been pointed out in the 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which, forged 
as a pro-slavery thunderbolt and ardently sup- 
ported by the Southerners, turned out the greatest 
anti-slavery measure that could be concocted. 
Lincoln, in one of his best moods, gets a peep into 
the irony inherent in the Popular Sovereignty of 
Douglas, and then darts it with success into his 
audience. After several good hits on the same 
linC; he winds up: "I defy any man to make an 
argument that will justify unfriendly legislation 
[Douglas's scheme for nullifying that very Dred 
Scott decision which he upholds] to deprive the 
slaveholder of his right to hold his slave in a Ter- 
ritory, that will not equally, in all its length, 
breadth and thickness, furnish an argument for 
nullifying the Fugitive Slave Law. Why, tJiere is 



416 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

not such an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas 
after all." 

These were the last words of Lincohi's last 
speech in the joint debate with Douglas (at Alton, 
October 15tli). It is very plain that he sees in 
Douglas the unconscious instrument of the aboli- 
tion of slavery, and chaffs him with telling humor 
upon his contradictory attitude. There is no 
doubt that Douglas feels the force of the thrust, 
for he does not undertake to parry it except with 
a little joke. He has been shown to be really the 
great nullifier of the Dred Scott decision through 
his Pojiular Sovereignty. By the irony of the 
World-Spirit he and his doctrine are made to do 
the subtlest work of Abolitionism. He is a worse 
enemy of Judge Taney than Lincoln, in spite of 
his protestations. Did he intend any such thing? 
Certainly not at first; but Douglas is by nature a 
breacher, a divider, a dualizer; such a character 
primarily breaches itself. Now it is this inner 
breach which Lincoln turns uj) to the light so 
effectively. After the debate Douglas must have 
understood himself much better; at least ho nnist 
have been made conscious of the doubhniess of his 
attitude. 

Li fact, Douglas affirms the Double Nation as 
the cardinal point of his political faith. 'This 
Republic can exist forever, divided into Free and 
Slave States." This is directly opposite to Lin- 
coln's doctrine, that the Nation cannot continue 



GIGANTOMACHIA. 417 

to exist half slave and half free. There is no 
doubt that the characters of the two men were 
reflected in their doctrines. Douglas, we repeat, 
was himself dual, being moulded by his long stay 
at the Capital into an image of the Dual Union in 
all its c(>ntradiction. But we have seen Lincoln 
during his Subsidence working out of the national 
dualism into which' he had been dipped through 
his Congressional term at the Capital. It must 
not be forgotten, however, that both adversaries 
are one in their devotion to the Union, though 
each has a different way of making it perpetual. 
The one says half-and-half ness forever; the other 
says the contrary. Douglas says the great danger 
to the Union is anti-slavery; Lincoln says it is 
slavery. Still, let us mark the common institu- 
tional substrate in both, for it will at last unite 
even the antitypes. 

If we look at the immediate purpose or motive 
of the two contestants, we see, first of all, that 
each was seeking to do to the other what the other 
was seeking to do to him. Lincoln was trying to 
keep Douglas from breaching the Republican party 
and to widen the breach in the Democratic party; 
while Douglas was skillfully exerting himself to 
breach the Republicans and to hold together the 
Democrats. Thus both endeavored to do the 
same thing; to divide the enemy arid not to let 
the enemy divide him and his. The Republican 
was the young party, still in a state of formation, 

27 



418 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

which Douglas must somehow prevent; the Demo- 
cratic was the old party, rather in a state of disso- 
lution, which Lincoln would encourage. But his 
chief object was to thwart the great breacherof par- 
ties, Stephen A. Douglas, in the latter's present 
attempt to cleave in twain the Republican party, 
and to take a goodly share of it for himself. So 
Lincoln now thrusts himself in between Douglas 
and his object, at first dogging his steps from place 
to place, and then challenging him to a direct per- 
sonal combat before the people. 

It is this challenge which brings about the seven 
joint debates, the seven personal combats of the 
Gigantomachia. The report has come down that 
Douglas did not wish to engage in it, and said so 
privately. He was aware that he would make 
Lincoln famous, declaring that ''if he gets the best 
of the debate — and I want to say he is the ablest 
man the Repuhlicans have got — I shall lose every- 
thing and Lincoln will gain everything." Inter- 
esting is this as another testimony to Douglas's 
appreciation of Lincoln, who has been already 
designated in public by him as "an amiable and 
intelligent gentleman." But this private word 
has no neutral tint; Douglas knew well the 
strength of his adversary. The question comes up, 
Did Lincoln have as true an appreciation of him? 
Still Douglas could hardly refuse the challenge, 
else the hard-fisted sons of the prairie would re- 
gard him as backing out from the offer of a fair 



GIGAXTOMACHIA. 419 

fight. Then Douglas was naturally pugnacious 
and rather liked a scrimmage, in which the little 
fighting-cock would ruffle his feathers with an im- 
posing audacity. Lincoln, Quaker-strained, did 
not love contention, with one striking exception: 
he did want to contend with Douglas. This is shown 
by the way he followed Douglas around from 
place to place, tackling the Little Giant as soon as 
the latter touched the soil of Illinois. For Lin- 
coln was at hand and sat on the platform when 
Douglas, having reached home, made his preluding 
speech in Chicago (July 9th, 1858). The next day 
Lincoln answered it in the same city ; he will not 
permit Douglas even to start the breach of the 
Republican party in Illinois without a hand-to- 
hand fight at every point. So he follows Douglas 
to Bloomington, and thence on to Springfield, 
where the Little Giant speaks in the day time and 
the Big Giant answers him the same evening (July 
17th). Thus they keep getting closer to each 
other. A week afterwards Lincoln sent his chal- 
lenge for a joint debate, which opened at Ottawa 
(August 21st). The otherwise peaceful Lincoln 
has one foe with whom he will make no peace; 
unrevenging generally he seems to have one ven- 
geance; doubtless too he harbors in that kind- 
hearted nature of his the one nook of jealousy. 

This personal feeling spurred and intensified his 
motive, but it was not, strictly speaking, his mo- 
tive in the present debate. Lincoln sought to 



420 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

save the victorious party of the anti-slavery cause 
from being disrupted by Douglas, who had already 
made a very successful start in that enterj:)rise, 
as we have seen. To be sure Lincoln would have 
liked the Senatorship, but that was uncertain, 
very uncertain at the beginning of the canvas. 
The prize of office he did not win, but the other 
greater prize, ''the bigger game" as he called it, he 
won decidedly : he kept his party whole for future 
service. The Presidency also may have hovered 
before him, and it was suggested by friends; but be- 
tween the two positions he preferred the Senator- 
ship. The human mind usually works for a single 
supreme object which we may call its motive; but 
it has at the same time other, even if lesser mo- 
tives. Ordinarily two motives have been assigned 
to Lincoln in the present case: the Senatorship 
and the Presidency. Let them both stand; but 
we place above both the motive to prevent Doug- 
las from dividing and thus destroying the new 
Republican organization as the prime condition of 
all future success over slavery. His whole plan of 
attack is to discredit Douglas as an anti-slavery 
leader, to breach the breacher's own doctrine, to 
countermine the undermincr. 

To understand Lincoln at this time, wo must 
understand his leading motives in the order of 
their influence. As already stated three stand out 
prominently, and their gradation may be set down 
as follows: 



GIGAXTOMACHIA. 421 

1. To preserve the integrity of the Republican 
organization against the attempted division of it 
by Douglas. This was the chief object or motive 
of Lincohi from now on till 1860. 

2. Second in order of strength, but still very 
powerful, was his wish for the Senatorship. But 
this he had to sacrifice to a mightier Design. 

3. Least was his desire for the Presidency, 
though it was by no means absent. But he 
shrank from the outlook upon its responsibility, 
with the South threatening disunion in case of the 
election of a Republican President. He said he 
was not fit for the office. Still this is just what 
another Judge than himself thinks he is fit for, and 
calls him. Lincoln hears the call, and, not with- 
out some inner questioning, obeys a decree which 
ho must have felt to be imperative. After con- 
siderable importunity from his friends, he finally 
permits them to present liis name to the Repub- 
lican Convention. 

As to the motives of Douglas, they seemingly 
ran in inverse order to those of Lincoln. Twice if 
not three times already Douglas had been a candi- 
date for the Presidency before the National Con- 
vention of his party. We have the right to think 
that the chief magistracy was still the highest ob- 
ject of his ambition. In fact this could not be 
disguised. But as the winning of the Presi- 
dency through his own party receded from his 
grasp, he wished in the second place to be Senator 



422 ABRAHAM LINCOLN^PART SECOND. 

again. Finally he hoped to make a division in the 
opposing party, in order to accomplish his lofty 
schemes. It was in this last purpose that he had 
to meet Lincoln at every fighting point, who on 
the whole foiled him of his prey. Besides its im- 
portant matters, this debate contains a lot of 
petty local and ephemeral stuff, which the reader 
must learn to separate and to throw aside. A 
great school for the people it is, who hear their 
fundamental law, their Constitution, discussed by 
the ablest exponents; and who are being prepared 
for changing it when the time is ripe. 

The battle of the Giants was really a prelimin- 
ary contest for the Presidency, whatever may 
have been the intentions of the combatants. Again 
we behold that peculiar play of counterparts 
which seemed to lurk in the destiny of these two 
antitypal characters. Each was a winner and a 
loser, but in opposite ways : Douglas won the im- 
mediate but lost the final prize, while Lincoln lost 
the immediate but won the final prize. It may be 
said too that each would have rather had the 
other's prize than his own; but they could not 
exchange. That was indeed forbidden by a Power 
over both, which has remanded each of the Giants 
to his special i)lacc for bringing forth its end in 
the World's History. Such is verily the third 
Giant, far mightier than the other two, who are 
indeed but instruments in his colossal hand, and 
are working harmoniouslv with him in their mu- 



THE BREACHER BREACHED. 423 

tually antithetic careers. So the Little and the 
Big Giants fight their battle to a finish on the 
prairie with a vast outlay of the spoken word; 
but over them the gathered people have caught 
glimpses of the colossal form of the third Giant 
directing the combats, allotting the victories and 
then awarding the guerdons of the modern Gigan- 
tomachia. 

VIII. 

The Breacher Breached. 

Already in the first Debate at Ottawa, Douglas 
began quizzing Lincoln, who answered his ciues- 
tions at the second place of meeting, Freeport. 
Then Lincoln began in his turn quizzing Douglas, 
and propounded four interrogatories, upon which 
the essential principles of the contest pivoted. 
Lincohi's plan of battle in these assaults upon his 
cunning adversary was to prevent him from breach- 
ing the Republican party, by making a breach 
from several sides in the position of Douglas him- 
self. The great breacher of parties was compelled 
to swallow a dose of his own medicine, and a heavy 
one too, which made him at times show show signs 
of sickness. The result was that Douglas, having 
at first taken the offensive, with no little flourish 
of trumpets, was soon forced to the defensive 
largely, which did not suit so well his native 
pugnacity. The contradiction between the Dred 
Scott decision and Popular Sovereignty was the 



424 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

gap in which Lincohi planted himself firmly, and 
which he began to pry open wider and wider, with 
crowbar and pick, till everybody saw through it, 
in spite of Douglas's many shifty attempts to cover 
it over, and to repel his assailant. 

The most famous one of the four interrogatories 
to which a fifth was afterwards added by Lincoln, 
was the second, which ran thus: 

"Can the people of a United States Territory, in 
any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of 
the United States, exclude slavery from its limits 
prior to the formation of a State Constitution?" 
This presupposes the attitude of Douglas who 
upheld the Dred Scott decision which affirmed that 
neither Congress nor the local legislature could 
exclude slavery from the Territories. Such was 
the supreme law of the land declared by its highest 
court; now the problem is, How can Douglas, in 
a lawful way, get around the law to which he 
acknowledges implicit obedience, blaming Lincoln 
because the latter questions its constitutionality? 
For in some way he must circumvent that decision 
practically, if the people are going to exclude 
slavery. 

But let us hear the answer of Douglas: "In my 
opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful 
means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to 
the formation of a State Constitution. * * * 
It matters not what the Supreme Court may here- 
after decide as to the abstract question whether 



THE BREACHER BREACHED. 425 

slavery may or may not go into a Territory under 
the Constitution, the people have the right to 
introduce it or exclude it as they please." Thus 
Douglas makes a desperate straddle over the chasm 
which Lincoln has caused to yawn between 
Popular Sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision. 
He performs the extraordinary feat of showing how 
to thwart the highest law lawfully. He tells how 
the people of a Territory can disobey the Constitu- 
tion constitutionally, which they ought always to 
obey. Douglas tells also how this double self- 
undoing act can be done. The Territory, through 
"unfriendly legislation," can exclude slavery which 
it has no power to exclude according to the Sup- 
reme Court, though this Court is to be followed 
without the least questioning. "Slavery cannot 
exist an hour anywhere unless it is supported by 
local police regulations," whose validity depends 
on the territorial legislation which is thus para- 
mount to Judge Taney's decision, which decision, 
nevertheless, all legislators ought to obey uncon- 
ditionally, in fact, are sworn to obey. 

Such is the warring dualism in the position of 
Douglas, or rather in the man himself, in his spirit. 
For wc cannot help thinking that he holds his 
doctrine to be true in all its doubleness. And this 
must be grasped as the peculiar character of 
Douglas at the present time : he has grown to be 
a self-contradiction in his mental fibre, his very 
conviction has become double as his doctrine; 



426 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

tlie breach is primarily witliin him, and must utter 
itself, yea, realize itself, outside of him. So we 
name him during this epoch, the Breacher, the 
cleaver of political parties, both of his own party 
and of the opposite. There is no doubt that in this 
inner self-division he deeply represents his time and 
his nation. The Union itself we have already seen 
to be twofold, self-conflicting, self-contradictory. 
Douglas is, therefore, the typical character of the 
decade between 1850-60, truly its greatest states- 
man. His doubleness, or we may say, his duplicity, 
is not merely personal, but national. On the con- 
trary there is a striking unity in Lincoln's character 
and doctrine, though he too has had to pass through 
his epoch of dualism, as we have already seen. And 
in his personal unity he bears the type, yea, the 
seed of the coming National unity, contrasting at 
the deepest point with his great antitype, Douglas. 
Now this breach not only in the doctrine but 
also in the character of his adversary, Lincoln well 
understood — he understood it all tli£; better be- 
cause he had passed through a similar state of 
mind himself. But he had come out of it healed 
and unified anew, and his cxpenenced eye coukl 
easily penetrate the dualism of Douglas as well 
as that of the Natiom In fact, Douglas himself 
both in his doctrine and in his very Ego, in his 
consciousness, was a vivid example of Lincoln's 
"House divided against itself," and therein re- 
sembled the dual Nation as it existed at that time. 



THE BREACH ER BREACHED. 427 

Hence Douglas, in fighting for his dual territorial 
principle, was fighting for himself, yea, for his very 
Self. And maintaining the permanence of the 
dual Nation, he was maintaining his own perma- 
nence. But the prophecy of Lincoln, ''You can't 
exist half and half, " holds good of Douglas himself 
and of his doctrine, as well as of the Nation. 
Lincoln's argument against Douglas might be 
summarized, "You can't exist half Dred Scott and 
half Popular Sovereignty." At this point es- 
})ccially, the whole Lincoln enters the half-and-half 
Douglas and pries him open before the eyes of the 
gazing Folk-Soul, exposing his doubleness, and 
that of his doctrine, and it must be added, that of 
the Nation. 

But in spite of this triple layer of dualism in 
Douglas, he nevertheless reaches down to unity 
in the bed rock of his soul, which lies underneath 
all his double tendencies. In this debate over and 
over again he affirms the primacy of the Union. 
One strong-hearted passage we may cite from his 
Freeport speech: "Show me that it is my duty, 
in order to save the Union, to do a particular act, 
and I will do it if the Constitution does not prohibit 
it. I am not for the dissolution of the Union under 
any circumstances. I will pursue no course of 
conduct that will give just cause for the dissolution 
of the Union. Theliope of the friends of freedom 
throughout the world rests upon the perpetuity of 
this Union." Douglas also feels that the Federal 



428 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Union has not merely a national but a world- 
historical mission. Therein he and Lincoln are 
quite alike, and at this point they will come 
together hereafter, when that deepest rift, Secession 
makes its appearance. To be sure, Douglas, in 
true accord with his present consciousness, holds 
that the Union must still continue half-and-half, 
as it has continued so long in the past. Herein is 
the point at which he and Lincoln collide. 

And now, in order to understand Douglas com- 
pletely, we must reach down to the most obscure, 
but probably the deepest breach in his soul, that 
between his anti-slavery and pro-slavery strains. 
Which was he — one or the other, neither or both? 
Did not the great conflict of the Nation and the 
Age reflect itself in some httle nook of his con- 
science underneath all his denunciation of aboli- 
tionism and all his dislike of negro equality and all 
his ambition to be President? We believe that it 
did, even if with strong protest and suppression. 
The moral question of the time lurks also in 
Douglas, though seldom allowed it to rise into the 
sunlight. Still it would escape now and then from 
its silent inner prison, and make itself heard on 
the outer air through his lips. Let us take this 
confession from his Ottawa speech: "I do not 
hold, because the negro is our inferior, that there- 
fore he ought to be a slav(\ ]^y no means can 
such a (conclusion he drawn from what I have said. 
On the contrary I hold that Humanity and Chris- 



THE BREACH ER BREACHED. . 42i^ 

tianity both require that the negro shall have and 
enjoy every right, every privilege and every 
immunity consistent with the safety of the society 
in which he lives. On that point, I presume, there 
can be no diversity of opinion.'" On that point, 
then, Douglas declares his agreement with Lincoln 
and the Republicans. In this passage he clearly 
questions whether "the negro ought to be a slave." 
Such we may deem to be his own conscience in the 
matter. But at once he draws the limit. Douglas 
declares that the Mrginian or Kentuckian has a 
conscience as well as himself, and it permits slave- 
holding, which thus becomes the Southerner's 
right. Conscience is a purely individual matter, 
making what is wi'ong in one place right in another. 
"I hold that Illinois has a right to abolish and pro- 
hibit slavery as she did, and I hold that Kentucky 
has the same right to continue and protect slavery 
that Illinois had to abolish it." The Ohio River 
thus gets to be the demarcation between two wholly 
contradictory rights. But we are interested in find- 
ing the real view of Douglas upon slavery. As he 
lives in Illinois, what would his conscience say about 
making it Slave-State? Says he, ''We have settled 
the slavery cjuestion as far as we are concerned; 
we have prohibited it in Illinois forever; and in 
doing so, I think we have done wisely, and there 
is no man in the State who would be more strenu- 
ous in his opposition to the introduction of slavery 
than I would." This is anti-slavery doctrine, and 



430 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

for Douglas rather decided. And we believe that 
the foregoing statement gives a glimpse of his 
inner personal conviction, usually not allowed to 
peep out. But mark the Hmit again! He will not 
allow his Illinois conscience to cross the Mississippi 
River into the State of Missouri ; j'^ea, he will not 
even allow it to migrate into the Territory of 
Kansas, and to afhrm its own existence there in its 
greatest struggle. I am anti-slavery for Illinois, 
but for every coming new State, "I don't care." 
Sucli we may well deem the moral breach in the 
very soul of Douglas. 

Still we have to think that Douglas did not relish 
slavery, and declined to be a slave-holder under 
very tempting circumstances. So we interpret 
his refusal of his father-in-law's present of a 
Southern plantation with its slaves, even if a 
political motive may also be assigned. (See pre- 
ceding page 297). We have already expressed our 
belief that it was this act which made him sus- 
pected by tlie Southern oligarchy, and thus clouded 
his Presidential outlook at the start, as far back as 
1847. So Douglas had a little quiet nook of anti- 
slavery conviction in his conscience, to which, we 
believe, he kept faithful. Still it was remarkably 
limited and unaggressive. If his neighbor chose 
to be a slave-holder, he had nothing to say. His 
conscience questioned whether a negro ought to be 
a slave, but if somebody else made him a slave, his 
conscience would never cry out against the act. 



I 



THE BREACH ER BREACHED. 431 

And to a territory struggling to keep out slavery, 
he could say, "I don't care." Lincoln repeatedly 
challenges him to declare whether he thinks 
slavery right or wrong, but cannot wring a direct 
answer out of his silent conscience. Nevertheless, 
Douglas indirectly lets enough drop to evidence 
that for himself internally and even for his own 
State, he is anti-slavery, )3ut for the Nation and its 
Territories he is not. lie is half-and-half even in 
his conscience as regards slavery, and honestly so, 
we hold. This is the deep and at first implicit 
moral breach in his soul which Lincoln digs up and 
throws at him with startling effect. Thus Douglas 
has an anti-slavery conviction within a given 
boundary, within a kind of Mason and Dixon's 
line, but outside of that line he has not, at least he 
will not enforce it, will not affirm it, will not even 
mention it unless compelled. Truly his conscience 
has gotten double like the Nation itself, and thus 
in a manner may be saitl to represent the Nation. 
Lincoln, on the other hand, we must deem the 
man with a unified conscience on this subject, 
though he also has had to pass through a time of 
dualism, which we have noted in his epoch of 
Subsidence, and which has given him his deepest 
experience. Douglas, listening to Lincoln's seven 
speeches on the same stage, nmst have become 
aware, partially at least, ot his own moral half-and- 
halfness, of the contradiction in his own conscience. 
And Douglas, hearin'j; the Folk-Soul there in his 



432 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

presence echo and re-echo back upon him in 
Oceanic waves of applause Lincoln's words, could 
not help feeling some faint intimation of the decree 
of the World-Spirit, which Lincoln was voicing 
in a kind of prophetic inspiration to the people, 
as he re-iterated that you, this Nation, cannot 
endure half slave and half free. And we may 
conceive Douglas, usually quite prosaic but rapt 
into a fantasy by the occasion, listening to an inner 
voice, also prophetic, which whispers to him: 
''Douglas, this conscience of yours cannot endure 
half free and half slave — free on this side, slave 
over yonder; it must become all one thing." 

Now this whispered forecast of Douglas con- 
cerning Douglas, is it also marching towards 
fulfilment? Is that inner divided house of his, 
divided like the Nation, ever to become united, 
united like the Nation? One thing is certain: 
in the canvas of 1858, Douglas strongly, even 
passionately affirms the Double Nation, and along 
with this goes his own doubleness and self-contra- 
diction, which Lincoln does not fail to make 
apparent even to Douglas himself. \'ery deeply 
has Lincoln breached him in his party, in his doc- 
trine, and even in his own conscience, despite his 
furious resistance. And as he is a man of brains, 
he must be getting aware that in his own case as 
well as that of the Nation, "a House divided against 
itself cannot stand." 



THE FREEPORT DOCTRIXE. ^33 

IX. 

The Freeport Doctrine. 

From these soul-stretching foresights and in- 
sights pertaining to Douglas, we must come back 
to a much-mooted historic c^uestion in reference to 
his so-called Freeport doctrine. This was con- 
tained in his answer to Lincoln's second interroga- 
tory, both of which have been already quoted in 
full length on a preceding page. In substance 
Douglas declares that the people of a Territory can 
legally exclude slavery, in spite of any decision of 
the Supreme Court ''on the abstract question 
whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory 
under the Constitution." 

This Freeport answer of Douglas was picked up 
by the newspapers and bruited all over the South 
with hostile comment. The Administration perse- 
cuted him and his supporters, using all its patron- 
age to defeat his election. Still he held the rank- 
and-file of his party in Illinois and in th^ North. 
He had, therefore, to fight two armies, which other- 
wise were totally opposite, as opposite as the two 
causes of freedom and slavery. A valiant cham- 
pion he showed himself with that wonderful power 
of breaching his foes. The foregoing answer to 
Lincoln's second question became known in history 
as his Freeport doctrine, and is often supi:)ose(l to 
have gained him the Senatorshi)) from Lincoln, but 
to have lost him the Presidency to Lincoln. 

28 



434 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Both these suppositions we beheve to be incor- 
rect. In the first place, Douglas was far stronger 
with the people of Illinois when he opened the 
campaign than when he closed it after a four 
months' fight. There is little doubt that if the 
election had been held on the 9th of July, when he 
made his first speech at Chicago amid approval and 
applause well-nigh universal, he would have car- 
ried the State overwhelmingly. That which the 
public then saw with an almost unanimous shout 
of approbation was his course on the Lecompton 
Constitution and the English bill, and Douglas did 
not fail to keep this part of his record in the eye of 
the people. But when he and Lincoln grappled, 
he began to lose, and this loss continued till the 
day of election, which gave Lincoln a slight ma- 
jority, though Douglas became Senator. In fact, 
just that was Lincoln's remarkable victory: he 
unified and strengthened his party against the 
grand breacher, Douglas, whose position he ef- 
fectually breached in turn. 

Still less correctly can it be said that Douglas 
lost the Presidency through his Freeport doctrine 
by causing the alienation of the South. The South 
was already alienated from him, and had through 
its leaders so said; as far as it was concerned, he 
had already lost the Presidency, and both sides 
recognized the fact. And Douglas had affirmed 
the same doctrine repeatedly before he ever heard 
that Freeport question of Lincoln. His first word 



THE FREEPORT DOCTRINE. 435 

of reply is true: "Mr. Lincoln knew that I had 
answered that question over and over again." 
Of course Lincoln knew it, and knew it well, and 
said so in a private letter of the time. But Lincoln 
also knew that people did not yet understand the 
contradiction between such a doctrine and the 
Dred Scott decision which Douglas also supported. 
The supreme motive of Lincoln in this second cjues- 
tion was to get the chance to breach Douglas and 
to hold him up as breached before the whole world. 
Particularly the wise men of the East, who had a 
tendency to veer off to Douglasism, notably 
Greeley, Wilson, Burlingame, and probably Sew- 
ard fo^; a time, might see the inherent nature of 
what they were doing. Moreover this became the 
ground-theme of Lincoln throughout all the rest 
of the debates: namely, the self-devouring an- 
tinomy between the two laws, that of the Supreme 
Court and that of Popular Sovereignty with its 
Territorial legislation. We repeat that the deepest 
object of Lincoln was to show the breacher breached 
— his two leading tenets being rent asunder and 
set against each other in their contradiction. 

The prominence given by the South and the Ad- 
ministration to the Freeport doctrine of Douglas 
caused a number of stories to start and play about 
Lincoln and his motives. It is said that his friends 
at a private meeting tried to dissuade him from 
presenting the question, crying in chorus: ''If you 
do, you will never be Senator." The ground for 



4.3G ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

such an inference seems to-day so flimsy that the 
whole affair has been branded as fabulous. More- 
over this meeting has aroused suspicion by being 
reported at so many different places: at Dixon, 
Mendota, Freeport, on a railroad train. Lincoln 
probably did meet his friends in each locality that 
he passed through, and sometimes he may have 
read his questions, and somebody may have ob- 
jected. Who blew the colossal bubble, inflating 
some little meeting of local politicians with a vast 
historical significance? Doubtless some news- 
paper reporter full of self-importance who was 
present; indications point to Joseph Medill, of 
Chicago, as the magician who could make an ocean 
of lather out of a pin-head of soap. 

Lincoln's answer to some protester has become 
historical, whatever be its origin: "I am after 
larger game ; the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred 
of this." The utterance is somewhat oracular, 
and most writers have at once taken for granted 
that Lincoln had already in mind the Presidency. 
But his repeated later declaration was that he did 
not deem himself fit to be President, and also that 
he would rather have the Senatorship than the 
Presidency. To our mind, the larger game to 
which Lincoln covertly alludes is what has already 
been given as liis loading motive: to prevent Doug- 
las from breaching the Reiniblican forces, first in 
Illinois and then in the Eastern States, where the 
danger was greatest. The chief Republican lead- 



THE FREEPORT DOCTRIXE. 437 

ers in the East were cither silent or had o[)enly 
advised Lincohi and his friends to re-elect Douglas. 
Here is what Lincoln thought of that policy: " Had 
we followed the advice, there would now be no 
Republican party in Illinois, and none to speak of 
anywhere else." This was spoken the year after- 
wards and gives a glimpse of Lincoln's deepest 
motive in the campaign for Senatorship, even 
though he strongly wished to be Senator, and must 
at times have thought of the possibility of his be- 
coming President -of the United States. The three 
stratified motives already indicated we must not 
leave out of mind ; moreover, we should recall that 
Lincoln was well aware not only of his vast seen 
audience, but also of his far vaster unseen one, 
embracing State and Nation, by means of the re- 
ports in the newspapers; yea, it was, as he says, a 
drama acted "to some extent in the face of the 
World," and, it may be added, of the World's His- 
tory. 

Both Lincoln and Douglas early divined each 
other's plan of battle. Already at Freeport each 
amusingly charges the other with the design of 
breaching the opposite party. Says Douglas: ''I 
know ^Ir. Lincoln's object : he wants to divide the 
Democratic party in order that he may defeat me 
and get to the Senate." Lincoln declares in his re- 
joinder: "I'll tell you what the Judge is afraid of. 
He is afraid we'll all pull together. This is what 
alarms him more than anything else. For my 



43S ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

})art, I do hope that ah of us, entertaining a com- 
mon sentiment in opposition to wliat appears to 
us a design to nationalize and perpetuate slavery, 
will waive minor differences which either belong 
to the dead past or the distant future, and all pull 
together in this struggle." Douglas then has not 
breached the Republican party in Illinois, what- 
ever may have been his success in the East. Again 
Lincoln says in the same debate: "His hope 
rested on the idea of enlisting the gi'eat ' Black Re- 
publican '-party, and making it the tail of his new 
kite." That was in Congress when he denounced 
the Lecompton fraud and even voted against the 
English bill. Now behold the change brought 
about chiefly by Lincoln's breaching the breacher. 
"But the Judge's eye is farther South now. Then 
it was very peculiarly and decidedly North." Who 
turned him around and made him face Southward 
again, or perchance both ways in his double doc- 
trine? That was the deed of the Big Giant, in 
which he shows himself truly gigantic. 

Such was Lincoln's famous second Freeport inter- 
rogatory with the reply of Douglas, the latter caus- 
ing such a thunderous detonation in the Soutli 
that many loud echoes rolled thence backward to 
the North. One of these echoes was the factitious 
importance, if not quite fictitious, of that meeting 
of Lincoln's friends, urging him not to ask the 
question. The truth is that -certain conscn'vatlvc^ 
friends of his were always opposing eac!i step he 



THE FREEPORT DOCTRINE. 439 

took in advance of them. How bitterly they con- 
tlemned, according to Herndon and Lanion, his 
grand Prekide concerning "the House divided 
against itself!" He had learned to take his own 
counsel, he must march to the front as leader, and 
soon the rest would follow. Already the World- 
Spirit was whispering to him its supreme behest, 
and he could not listen to the petty cavils of small 
politicians without defaulting his own destiny. 
So in these days we behold Lincoln going straight 
ahead and delivering his message, verily world- 
historical. 

If the second interrogatory produced its chief 
result in the South, the third one of the same Free- 
port series was far more effective in the North. 
In fact Lincoln evidently thought it the most im- 
portant of all these questions, if we may judge 
from the number of times in which he pressed it 
directly upon his adversary or repeated its argu- 
ment. Here it is: "If the Supreme Court of the 
United States shall decide that States cannot ex- 
clude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of 
acquiescing in, adopting, and following such de- 
cision as a rule of political action?" 

The question gave Lincoln the opportunity to 
drive home to his audience, both Republican and 
Democratic: Are you ready to see Illinois made a 
slave-State by a new Dred Scott decision? More- 
over, Douglas does not directly answer the ques- 
tion, declaring it to be absurd and an imputation 



140 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

upon the Supreme Court, and an attempt "to 
destroy public confidence in the highest judicial 
tribunal on earth." Still, his answer, if it means 
anything, means his opposition to such a decision. 
Really Douglas is again breached in his view of the 
Supreme Court, by Lincoln, as he was before 
breached in his Popular Sovereignty. Very im- 
pressive rose Lincoln's eloquence upon this theme, 
especially at Galesburg; he made the Folk-Soul 
shiver at the outlook of slavery legalized in Illinois 
by a fresh decree of Judge Taney. Not only 
possible but probable was such a result, in case of 
a Democratic Presidential victory; in fact, the 
Dred Scott decision, as the first step, was far 
harder to take than this second step would be. 

Lincoln's party obtained a majority of nearly 
4,000 over Douglas in a Northern State which had 
voted for Buchanan two years before. The man 
who could do that showed himself the available 
candidate for the coming Presidency. Seward 
certainly could not have done it. Lincoln had 
prevented the breaching of his party, had rallied it 
around himself, and had brought it to say in 
thousandfold chorus with himself: This nation 
cannot endure half slave and half free. Such was 
his great victory, though he had lost the Senator- 
ship through hold-over members of the State Legis- 
lature, and through an unfair, or rather outgrown, 
apportionment. Lincoln was aware that he had 
dcilivered a great mcsssage. Li a private letter he 



OUTSIDE THE STATE. 441 

writes a few daj's after the election: "I am glad I 
made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the 
great and durable question of the age, which I would 
have had in no other way. * * * j believe I 
have made some marks which will tell for the cause 
of civil liberty long after I am gone." It may be 
said that he has proclaimed the evangel of the 
time, voicing the World-Spirit to the Folk-Soul. 
He has uttered the culminating word of the Lincoln- 
Douglas sexennium. From all directions echoes 
begin to sound back to him of the great deed he 
has done, with implorations for help. The cry is: 
Come to us and repeat your Illinois work; we have 
the same diabolic malady here which you have cast 
out there; come and help us, in the name of the 
Lord ! So Lincoln has to buckle on his armor again 
and set out on a much longer march, nothing less 
than the circuit of the entire free North from East 
to West. 

Outside the Sfate. 

Again Lincoln is to nationalize himself, l^it not 
by going as Senator to the Capital. Once he went 
thither as Representative, and was dualized 
thereby so deeply that he sank down into his 
long Subsidence. Then he, a supporter of the 
Wilmot Proviso in favor of excluding slavery from 
the territories, campaigned the North-Eastern 
States for the Whig party which tramj^led upon 



442 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

the Proviso. But now he goes from the Illino;? 
Capital to the same North-Eastern States a uni- 
fied Abraham Lincoln, and with a unified party 
back of him; yea it may be said, that he having 
unified himself oul^ of his own dualism, has done 
the same for his party — the i)ivotal deed of uni- 
fying it against the arch-breacher of parties, 
Douglas. That was really the great and lasting 
victory won by him in the Battle of the Giants 
recently fought upon the ijrairies. 

At once that deed began to be recognized in its 
true bearing throughout the North, and in the 
South too. A friend compared him to Byron, 
who said that he awoke one morning and found 
himself famous. The epochal man had arisen, 
and the People began to see his outlines, and to 
call for him everywhere. His doctrine in regard 
to the restriction of slavery was not new; it had 
been already embodied in the Rej^ublican plat- 
form of 185G. But the real crisis was the scission 
which Douglas was producing in the anti-slavery 
ranks, especially of the East. And now steps 
forth the man of the hour, out of the dark almost, 
and puts himself right into the breach of the Ti- 
tanic jDarty-splitter in the latter's own home. 
Douglas indeed gets back to the Senate, but Lin- 
coln consolidates and unifies his party as never 
before, carrying with him a greater number of his 
State's voters than his opponent, though not quite 
a majority of the total vote. 



OUTSIDE THE STATE. 443 

Soon from every point of the horizon voices 
begin to float into Lincohi's retirement at Spring- 
field: Will you not help us tlo in our State what 
you have done in yours — Douglasism is breaching 
the party here too. Out of the many calls Lin- 
coln had to make a selection. Evidently witli 
design he chose four locahties in which lie mig^U 
well think his presence to be most needed — two in 
the new States (West) and two in the old (East). 
These we may mention in chronological order, all 
of these visits occurring in the period from autumn 
1859 to spring 1860. 

1 Ohio. Douglas had already made a speech in 
Columbus a little while before the advent of Lin- 
coln, who was ever ready to pursue his antagonist 
over the whole country, as he did in Illinois. 
Thus the contest was getting transferred beyond 
the border of their State. Lincoln's speech at Co- 
lumbus largely repeated his former arguments 
against Douglas. But we see the chief design of 
the orator in his warning to the Ohioans: "the 
most imminent danger that threatens that purpose," 
namely the purpose of the Kepublican party in re- 
stricting slavery ''is that insidious Douglas Popular 
Sovereignty. That is the miner and the sapper,'^ 
whose aim is to undermine and thus breach the Re- 
publican organization. It seeks to do this j^rimarily 
by debauching public sentiment with an indiffer- 
ence to slavery. Its principle is ''that if one man 
chooses to make a slave of the other man, neither 



444 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

that other man nor anybody else has a right to 
object." Thus the Free-States are being made 
ready for a universal slave code, and for the na- 
tionalizing of slavery. Such is the effect of that 
insidious "I don't care" of Douglas, "the miner 
and the sapper" of our party. Lincoln also takes 
a tilt at the history of Popular Sovereignty as set 
forth in the recent magazine article of Douglas — a 
subject which he will investigate more fully for 
his later Cooper Institute speech. Note too that 
keen thrust into character: "He, Douglas, is so 
put up by nature that a lash upon his back would 
hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back 
would not hurt him." 

Interesting is the fact that Lincoln now gets in 
Columbus a publisher for his speeches and those of 
Douglas in the great Debate. The book was cir- 
culated by the Republican Committee as a cam- 
paign document for the fall elections, and three 
large editions were sold directly to the public. 
Already in Springfield Lincoln had sought to in- 
duce a publisher to take hold of the work, but 
without success. To-day, after half a century, it 
has become a kind of political Folk-Book, speaking 
as none other of the kind to the American People. 

The next day (September 17th) Lincoln went to 
Cincinnati and then^ matle a speech. He gave it 
a new turn by transforming it into an ironical 
address to the Kentuckians across the Ohio river 
in favor of Douglas. Somebody in tlie audience 



OUTSIDE THE STATE. 445 

cried out: Speak to Ohio men and not to Ken- 
tuckians. Really, however, he was speaking to 
Ohio men and showing them in this indirect way 
that Douglas was secretly supporting the Southern 
view, here represented by Kentuckians, and that 
these ought to favor him for the Presidency, as a 
number of their leading men had urged his elec- 
tion to the Senatorship instead of Lincoln. The 
irony brings out strongly what Lincoln deemed 
the insidious method of Douglas. 

We see that Lincoln strives to keep the Repub- 
lican party on institutional lines, and thus to 
unite all anti-slavery men upon the one supreme 
question. The Ohio Republican Convention had 
called for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, 
which would "utterly overwhelm us in Illinois 
with the charge of enmity to the Constitution 
itself," for it would alienate "many good men 
sincerely opposed to slavery," yet adhering to 
the Constitution. Such a plank should by all 
means "be kept out of our National Convention" 
of 1860, and it was. (Works I., pp. 536, 537). 
Then Kansas with all her Free-Stateism leans de- 
cidedly to the Popular Sovereignty of Douglas 
"who is the most dangerous enemy of liberty, be- 
cause the most insidious one." So Lincoln is off 
foi- Kafisas next, which needs some elevation of 
its individual cause into a universal principle. 

2 Kansas. The people whose conflict compelled 
the birth of the Republican party, Lincoln must 



446 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

see and address. Having received an invitation, 
he sets out for that still debatable land and makes 
quite a little campaign through its towns in De- 
cember, 1859. There was no election for public 
officers at stake, as Kansas was still a territory. 
But the strange fact that Kansas was a strong- 
hold of Douglas Democracy lured Lincoln to that 
epoch-turning borderland. For a majority of the 
fighting Free-State men of Kansas had always 
been and were undoubtedly still Democrats and 
not Republicans. The Popular Sovereignty of 
Douglas appealed mightily to these hard-fisted, 
self-reliant frontiersmen. This fact which seems 
so incredible at present, was known to Lincoln, 
who probably said to himself on receiving the in- 
vitation: "There in that new country I think I 
can do a little missionary work," and started off. 
Moreover the rupture of Douglas with his own 
National Administration had been on account of 
free Kansas. Then he had recently voted against 
the English bill with its attempt to bribe the 
Kansans into accepting the Lecompton Constitu- 
tion — an act of Douglas very popular in Kansas 
and elsewhere. 

So Lincoln resolves to attack this newest fortress 
of Douglasism. Primarily he would dwell upon 
the Douglas doctrine of indifference : "I don't care 
whether slavery is voted up or down in Kansas" — 
so Douglas had said dozens of times. But these 
hardy Free-State men, though Democrats, did 



OUTSIDE THE STATE. 447 

care for just that before anything else in the 
world, having risked their lives for years in de- 
fense of Freo-Stateism. And now before them 
stood the man who had fought their battle in 
Illinois against Douglas in person — and this man 
did care and so did his party. There is little 
doubt that many a Kansas Free-State Democrat 
concluded to vote with the friends of his cause 
henceforth. 

Only a few random jottings of Lincoln's ad- 
dresses in Kansas have been preserved. (See Lin- 
coln's Works by Nicolay & Hay, I. 585). From 
these we catch his theme: "the insidious Douglas 
popular sovereignty" which is undermining our 
own party, and thus is getting rid of the sole op- 
position to "a Congressional slave-code for the 
Territories, and the revival of the African slave- 
trade, and a second Dred Scott decision" making 
slavery legal in every Free-State of the Union. 
To be sure these last dangers are not yet immi- 
nent, but when Douglasism has sapped the con- 
viction that slavery is wrong, they will appear, 
and there will be no organized party to resist 
them. Such was the thought which in these days 
Lincoln kept brooding over and repeating in his 
speeches, with many a forewarning against the 
dark and devious subterranean "sapper and 
miner." 

3. Neio York. Of course Lincoln must go to 
the Old States of the North-East, chief seat of the 



448 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

Republican defection to Douglas, who had actu- 
ally breached the anti-slavery party there, to the 
serious injury of Lincoln in his battle with Douglas 
for the Senatorship. Very gratifying was the in- 
vitation from New York City to deliver a political 
address, which took place at Cooper Institute, 
February 27, 1860, and is often said to have been 
the chief influence in getting Lincoln nominated 
for the Presidency a few months later. 

Naturally the argument of the speech is directed 
against Douglas, who, in his recent trend, had 
sought to show that ''our Fathers when they 
framed the Government under which we live, un- 
derstood this question just as well, and even bet- 
ter, than we do now," and really were the first 
upholders and j^romulgators of Popular Sov- 
ereignty. This argument was adjusted to the 
East, where the Fathers ''once lived and did their 
work, and where the old transmitted order had a 
more powerful hold than in the West, which could 
boast of no such history. Douglasism, instead of 
originating with the Nicholson letter of General 
Cass in 1848, was now claimed to be as old as the 
Constitution itself, if not older, according to the 
Har})er Magazine article of Douglas. So the Little 
Giant, liitherto the champion of the new States, 
began to appeal to the conservative and tradi- 
tional sentiment of the old States in favor of his 
doctrine, and thus to widen the breach in the Re- 
publican party. But again Lincoln meets him at 



OUTSIDE THE STATE. 449 

his chosen point and overwhchiis him so com- 
pletely that the Eastern rent begins then and there 
to vanish, even Greeley's Tribune printing next 
day Lincoln's speech in full and saying that "no 
man ever before made such an impression on his 
first appeal to a New York audience." Thus Lin- 
coln unmasked that new historic pretence of 
Douglas, and at the same time far surpassed him 
in flattering indirectly the New Yorkers and East- 
erners generally as the descendants of "the 
Fathers" who had repeatedly sought through na- 
tional legislation to keep slavery out of the terri- 
tories. 

The real underlying motive of Lincoln, however, 
in going to New York, was not to make a speech 
proving that "the Fathers" were Lincolnites in- 
stead of Douglasites, but to heal that very serious 
* Eastern breach in the Republican party. We 
read in his Kansas jottings: "Last year we Repub- 
licans in Illinois were advised by numerous and 
resj^ectable outsiders to re-elect Douglas to the 
Senate by our votes," and thereby "advance our 
principles by supporting men .who oppose our 
principles." Such was the strong exhortation 
coming to him out of the East. "Had we followed 
the advice, there would he now no Republican party 
in Illinois, and none to speak of anywhere else." 
Here Lincoln declares the real victory won in his 
conflict with Douglas: the integrity of the Repub- 
lican party. He continues: "True, Douglas is 

29 



450 ABRAHAM LIXCOLX-PART SECOXD. 

back in the Senate in spite of us, but we are clear 
of him and his principles, and we are uncrippled 
and ready to fight him and them straight along" 
to the end. These statements are very important 
as giving Lincoln's view of real stake in the Illinois 
battle. In his Cincinnati speech he alluded to 
the "three or four very distinguished men of the 
most extreme anti-slavery views of any men in the 
Republican party" who favored the re-election of 
Douglas to the Senate, so wonderful was the 
latter's "power of doing what would seem to be 
impossible." The deepest fact of the Cooper In- 
stitute speech was that Lincoln went to the East 
and threw himself into the worst breach that 
Douglas had made in the Republican party, com- 
pletely triumphing over the insidious "sapper and 
miner." His speech was great, but far greater 
was his deed, for this was what showed his leader- 
ship—a fact which began to dawn even upon the 
"Wise Men of the East." 

4. New Englcmd. From New York Lincoln 
thought he would run over and see his boy' Bob, 
who was going Jo school at an Eastern acad- 
emy. Wherever he went, the man who had 
breached the breacher Douglas was called on for a 
speech. What he said in most cases has not come 
down, but there is no doubt that he overflowed 
with his dominating theme at this time— "that 
insidious Douglas Popular Sovereignty." Still there 
seems to have been in his remarks some slight ad- 



OUTSIDE THE STATE. 451 

justment to the locality. New England did not 
much need to be lectured to on Anti-slaveryism ; 
her Unionism was her weak spot and had been 
since the Embargo. But Lincoln's devotion to 
the Union lay deeper than even hia hostility to 
slavery, as he afterwards showed and said when 
President. Some of his remarks while in Connect- 
icut have been preserved (see Works, I., pp. 613- 
631) ; it is evident that he took occasion to empha- 
size that "John Brown was not a Republican." 
In this way he could indirectly touch upon New 
England's tendency to John-Brownism. Her most 
famous literary men and philosophers had hero- 
ized the old Puritan by his deed and death at Har- 
per's Ferry, and in some instances had quite 
deified him, regarding him as "the new Christ." 
That was not the view of Lincoln, w^hose war upon 
slavery was to be in accord with Law and Consti- 
tution. 

So Lincoln goes the round of the Northern 
States from the extreme East to the extreme 
West, making himself truly a national man, even 
if he was excluded from the South. His great ol> 
joct was to preserve the integrity of his political 
party in the rest of the 'Free-States as he had pre- 
served it in Illinois, against Douglasism. Hence 
he is seen chiefly counter-mining "the sapper and 
miner," breaching the furious demonic breacher 
of all political parties of the time, Douglas, wdio 
cleft his own party in twain, and tried to cleave 



452 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

the Republican party. But he was met, halted, 
and breached in turn by Lincoln, who has thus 
shown himself the towering champion of the com- 
ing issue before the whole country. And the tria^ 
of this issue is not distant. When Lincoln rcachef, 
home in Springfield, the Presidential year of 1860 
is considerably advanced; in a few months the 
nominations of both parties for the chief magis- 
tracy of the Nation must be made, and then 
comes the most im{)ortant and exciting canvas 
ever witnessed in this country. Who are the men 
supereminent as leaders? 



XI. 

Lincoln, Douglas, Seward. 

These are the three men who at this time are 
very generally spoken of as the national candidates 
for the Presidency ; other candidates appear rela- 
tively local. The first noteworthy fact is that 
they are all from the North, which seems at 
present to be producing the greatest statesmen 
What has brought about the marked change fron 
the beginning of the government when the South 
furnished the leading public men, and ruled the 
country? Nothing is more remarkable during the 
Civil War llian the ina(le(iuacy of Southern states- 
manshii) and the excellence of Soulh(>rn soldier 
ship. This fact we must put together with the 



LIXCOLX, DOUGLAS, SEWARD. 453 

other fact that the greatest statesman of the 
North, Lincoln, was a native Southerner, and 
many of his most important advisers were either 
born in the South or of Southern extraction. It 
looks as if the old Virginia statesmanship had also 
gone with the stream of migration into the free 
North-Wcst, especially after it became manifest 
that emancipation had stopped its course south- 
ward permanently at Mason and Dixon's line. In 
fact one may well think that if Washington, Jef- 
ferson and Marshall had been young men starting 
in life about 1820-30, they would all, with their 
well-known views on slavery, have made a })ush for 
one of the new Free-States north of the Ohio river, 
as did thousands upon thousands of their fellow- 
citizens from Maryland, Virginia and even North 
Carolina. Lincoln's political genealogy goes back 
to Virginia even more decisively than his physical 
descent from grandfather Abraham Lincoln of 
Rockingham county. But at present there is no 
Virginia statesman, no Southern statesman spoken 
of for the Presidency; Lincoln is the only South- 
erner who has any chance of nomination and 
election, and the South is almost unanimous 
against him, her greatest son since Washington, 
That ought to have given her some food for reflec- 
tion -even in the hot passionate days of 1858-GO, 
before his full supremacy had manifested itself. 
The wonderful gift of Virginia i)olitical leadersliip 
had migrated to the Western Free-States where it 



454 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

had organized the North on institutional lines 
against the extension of slavery. 

At the same time it should be observed that not 
every portion of the North has be(>n able to bring 
forth Presidents. In New England, Presidential 
timber will not grow since the Civil War, doubt- 
less for a good reason, or rather for two good rea- 
sons, an external and internal. The Republican 
party once tried to break this rule, to its cost. 
Equally certain is it that no Presidential tree has 
ever yet come from the vast aspiring forests west 
of the Mississippi. The Democratic party has de- 
fied this rule more than once, to its disaster. The 
Slave-States saw their last Chief Magistrate disap- 
pear at the death of Taylor, with the exception of 
his Accidency, Andy Johnson. East of the Hud- 
son, south of the Ohio, west of the Mississippi, a 
President has not grown in the last fifty years. 
New England and the South, not sympathetic on 
many points, can heartily join in the common ex- 
ecration of this peculiar political law, stronger 
than any enactment, which excludes both from 
the highest office in the land with more potency 
than if they had been disfranchised by a clause of 
the Constitution of the United States, for this can 
be gotten at and repealed. The young West can 
be more serene, for its chance is probabl}' coming, 
though not yet arrived by any means. The belt 
of Presidential timber, accordingly, extends from 
New York to Ohio, to which Indiana and Illinois 



LIXCOLX, DOUGLAS SEWARD. 455 

arc to be added, skipping Pennsylvania, whicli 
seems to have exliausted itself in producing James 
Buchanan, the weakest Executive the country 
ever had, so that it cannot even be persuaded to 
cull another sample from that State. With the 
coming of the new order, this new adjustment of 
the sources of our Presidents takes place, giving 
a complete monopoly of them to four States of 
the Union, indeed almost to two of these States, 
New York and Ohio. Meanwhile the rest of the 
Commonwealths, forty and more, are standing 
in a kind of ring around this political game, 
looking at it and even sharing in it with wonder 
at the secret machinery. 

Now the foregoing Presidential sec-saw between 
the East and the West, between the Hudson and 
the Mississippi, begins to show itself in 1858-60, 
when Lincoln and Douglas of Illinois, and Seward 
of New York, loom up as the leading candidates 
for the Presidency, \vith some mention of two Ohio 
men. Chase and M'Lcan. And that see-saw has 
been going on ever since uj) to the present year 
(1908). 

The political contest between Douglas and Lin- 
coln has been already dwelt upon : the one repre- 
sents the perpetuity of the Dual Union (a contra- 
diction in itself by the way), and the other rei)re- 
sents that dualism overcome and harmonized into 
a new unity and Union. But how about Seward, 
belonging to the old Free-States of the North-East, 



456 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

and also an anti-slavery man and a Republican? 
The fact must be confessed that Seward is as 
deeply dualized as Douglas, though in a different 
way. He has proclaimed the Higher Law of the 
individual conscience as paramount to the Enacted 
Law; yet he is a member of the supreme law-mak- 
ing body of the land, and has in such capacity 
taken the oath to obey the Constitution of the 
United States. Lincoln always kept clear of that 
antinomy, though he knew it well. Again, Sew- 
ard has entangled himself in a similar contradic- 
tion over the Fugitive Slave Law, into wliicli 
clash Lincoln took great care not to fall. But the 
most famous statement of Seward is the "irre- 
pressible conflict" alluded to already; says he in 
his Rochester speech, "the two systems of labor 
arc more than incongruous, they are incomjiati- 
ble," and produce "an irrepressible conflict be- 
tween opposing forces, and it means that the 
United States must and will, sooner or later, be- 
come either entirely a slave-holding nation or en- 
tirely a free-labor nation." This is the same as 
Lincoln's "it must become all one thing or all the 
other." Very significant in grasping Seward's 
character is his criticism of the great Compromises 
(same speech): "It is the failure to apprehend 
this great truth that induces so man}^ unsuccessful 
attempts at final comj^romisc between the Slave- 
States and the Free-States, and it is the existence 
of this great fact that renders all such pretended 



i 



LIXCOLX, DOUGLAS, SEWARD. 457 

compromises when made, vain and ephemeral." 
Such is Seward, the man of theory, and unques- 
tionably he sees the truth with that keen dia^ 
lectical intellect of his. But who could have be- 
lieved that when it comes to the test of action, 
Seward will turn out the greatest compromiser 
known to American History? In 1860, after his 
party's victory, he is ready to throw it away in a 
compromise between the Slave-States and the 
Free-States, between which he had declared all 
compromise to be "vain and ephemeral." Herein 
Lincoln is again the corrective, who forbade ex- 
plicitly any compromise ©n the slavery question 
as regards the territories. 

Compared to the inner unity of Lincoln, Seward 
is deeply dual and self-contradictory; he, too, has 
never had that pivotal personal experience of un- 
folding out of the Double Nation, such as we saw 
Lincoln getting in the time of his Subsidence. 
This is one reason why we are inclined to think 
that Seward's "irrepressible conflict" was really a 
repetition, an East(M-n echo of Lincoln's Prelude 
spoken several months before. That utterance of 
Seward could never have sjirung from the long but 
character-making wr(>stle of the spirit througli 
which we have seen Lincoln passing in a kind of 
Purgatorial discipline. Out of his soul's agony, 
we have to think, rose his intense conviction that 
this Nation can no longer exist as it has liitherto 
existed — half-slave and lialf-free. Seward uttercc 



458 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

the same {jrinciple, but it had never been wrought 
over into the innermost fibre of his political faith, 
for ho could abandon it too easily and compromise 
it away too readily. Seward, the anti-slavery 
orator, declaimed one thing; Seward, the practical 
statesman, acted, or was ready to act, another 
thing. That could not be said of Lincoln, concilia- 
tory as he was on many points. 

In the deepest sense, therefore, Lincoln was a 
fitter man for the Presidency than Seward — ^a fact 
which time will strikingly confirm. Seward, we 
repeat, was as profoundly dual as Douglas, who 
both in theory and practice, clunff to the Double 
Nation. But Seward in theory declared its coming 
unity, while in practice he would jDcrpetuate its 
duality. To the Folk-Soul the problem roused by 
the Fugitive Slave Law was: Shall I obey Con- 
science or the Constitution? Seward's w^ord was: 
Obey Conscience, the Higher Law; but Seward's 
deed was: Obey the Enacted Law and follow the 
Constitution. Such a man cannot be the leader in 
the grand crisis of the Nation, with that chasm 
between his word and his deed ; he cannot be the 
executor of the World-Spirit, whose decree, even 
if he hears it, he is unable to carry out. Still 
Seward is a very important man of the time. 
With his learning, his long experience in public 
life, his hold on a large following, his gift of 
rhetorical utterance and his unusual dialectical 
skill, he will be an indispensable instrument when 



LINCOLN, DOUGLAS, SEWARD. 459 

guided by Lincoln, whose deficiencies arc, on many 
points, covered by Seward. 

Such are the three towering individuaUties of the 
time, one of whom has to be leader in the ap- 
proaching crisis. It is Lincoln who harmonizes 
most completely within himself the moral and the 
institutional elements in their bitter collision over 
the slavery question. With Seward and Douglas 
it is one or the other, though in opposite ways; 
with Lincoln it is both, each concordant and co- 
operant with the other. And the People must 
have both these elements or perish; neither is to 
suppress the other in its rightful sphere; both 
belong to the one complete process of the individual 
soul and of the Folk-Soul. Lincoln preserved and 
harmonized, l^oth the institutional and moral ele- 
ments, as far as was possible in that time of their 
strifeful antagonism. For this reason it may be 
said that he reflected in his own soul the deepest 
need and aspiration of the Folk-Soul, which did 
not fail to take him as the best representative of 
what was best in itself, when it had found him 
out. He was, therefore, the synthesis of and over 
both Sewartl and Douglas in the one supreme 
matter of the time, though these two statesmen 
possessed other great talents and accomplishments 
to which Lincoln could not and did not lay any 
claim. 



460 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

XII. 

The Political Year I860. 

Fuller of politics than any other year of our his- 
tory was 1860. There was a very general pre- 
sentiment of the coming conflict, and many people, 
though by no means all, began to align themselves. 
All over the South was heard the ominous cry: 
If a Republican is elected President, we shall dis- 
solve the Union. Necessarily the thinking men 
in the North began asking themselves. What then? 
But the answer was seldom forthcoming; the idea 
of civil war was shocking, and the problem re- 
mained unsolved. Still, the disquieting question 
was ever present, and kept the popular mind agi- 
tated with surmises, and busied with interrogations 
about matters of deepest national consequence. 

For the deepest rift in the Nation, the dissolu- 
tion of the Union, has actually begun to yawn the 
whole length of Mason and Dixon's hno, and the 
people on both sides are ranged along the edges 
looking into the dark abyss and trying in vain to 
see the bottom. The Folk-Soul of the North has 
finally concluded that there shall bo no more Slave- 
States; both Northern parties ])ractically reach 
that same end, though in different ways. But the 
South is getting ready to r(>fuse any such limitation 
put upon her State-producing pow(M- and to vindi- 
cate what she deems her right, even at the point of 
the sword, if necessary. 



THE POLITICAL YEAR 1860. ■ 461 

Very important becomes the attitude of Douglas 
in this conflict. He is the mediatorial element 
between North and South, if there be any media- 
tion possible. He would build a kind of bridge 
over the gaping chasm between the two sections. 
No moral objection to slavery stands in his path; 
he would permit more Slave-States if the people 
of the Territories voted that way; but if not, the 
Free-State must come in. The Southerners, how- 
ever, declare that their slave property must be 
protected in the Territories like any other projlerty, 
by the national Congress or Judiciary; while the 
Republicans maintain that slavery must be ex- 
cluded from the Territories by Congressional 
enactment. Both the extremes in the North and 
in the South are at one in recjuiring the central 
government at Washington to determine the ques- 
tion, but Douglas hands it over to the people of 
the Territories — which method satisfies neither of 
the other parties. Both of these are agreed that 
the Nation must be productive of Free-States or of 
each sort; Douglas would evade this problem as 
national, and make it local and territorial. But 
the World-Spirit is calling for the decision from the 
Nation, and he also will soon have to take one 
side or the other, his own standpoint being swal- 
lowed up in the deeper problem. 

Which side will he take with his vast influence? 
For it will have to be acknowledged that at this 
moment Douglas wields a mightier personal influ- 



462 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

ence than any other man in America. One can 
think that the great brcacher may possibly be 
ready in the heat of conflict to carry his breach to 
the final outcome in the division of the Nation 
itself. But no! not the Union will he touch; at 
that point he draws unswervingly the line. He 
will breach a political party, his own and that of 
his antagonists, if he can; but he will not breach 
his country. He is, at bottom, an institutional 
man; this we have always seen and declared of 
him "from the beginning. And now he starts to 
pass out of his breaching period; he will take his 
last stand against the attempt of Jefferson Davis 
and others to breach the Union. 

The Democratic Convention, which was to nomi- 
nate a candidate for the Presidency, met at Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, April 23, 18G0, and began a 
process of inner self-division which symbolized the 
total Nation and prefigured what was soon to take 
place in reality. A Douglas platform was adopted 
by a majority of the delegates, against the hot pro- 
test of the Southern minority, whereupon the 
whole tier of Cotton States, from South Carolina 
to Texas, including Arkansas, seceded from the 
Convention. But the nominee required two-tJiirds 
of the delegates, and so many Douglas could not 
obtain, though he had the decided majority. The 
result was an adjournment to meet at Baltimoi'c on 
June 18th; but from this second convention there 
was a second secession of Southern States, chiefly 



I 



THE POLITICAL YEAR 1860. 463 

the middle tier. The seceders fi'om the Conven- 
tion, who are to become the secessionists from the 
Union, meet together and nominate their candi- 
date, Breckinridge. Douglas is the nominee of 
the regular Convention, though after a double 
secession, which is not only a foreshadowing but 
an actual pre-enactment of the course of these 
Southern States after the election of Lincoln. 
The lower tier will secede first, and then after 
some months the second tier, with Mrginia. 

Thus Douglas has completely breached his own 
poli.tical party, which we must regard as his su- 
preme historical function in the transitional period 
between 1850 and 1860. He was the most promi- 
nent, yea, the greatest statesman of the decennium, 
and his mighty negative act was the disruption of 
his own, the slavery-supporting, party, from which 
act flowed indirectly the Civil War, the reconstruc- 
tion of the Union, with the elimination of slavery. 
We have already noted this breaching trend of 
Douglas in the national Democratic Convention of 
1852. But it burst forth with all its power in the 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and was con- 
tinued till its final culmination in the national 
Democratic Convention of 1860. 

Let us now pass to his rival, Lincoln, who has 
likewise become a candidate for the Presidency, 
rather unwillingly, it would seem, or perchance 
with an unwilling willingness. His statement in a 
letter to Galloway (July 28, 1859) cannot be set 



464 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

down to mere modesty: "I must say I do not think 
myself fit for the Presidency." Ah'eady far- 
sighted men outside of Illinois had begun to see in 
him the coming man. At a later date (December 
9, 1859) in a letter to Judd he declares: "You 
know I am pledged not to enter a struggle with 
him [Senator Trumbull] for the seat in the Senate 
now occupied by him; and yet / would rather have 
a full term in the Senate than in the Presidency." 
Such was Lincoln's view of himself not six months 
before his nomination to the Presidency. But the 
Gods have repeatedly forbidden him the Senator- 
ship, and again have blocked the way to that posi- 
tion in the future. Only one road lies open to 
him, and always seems to be getting more and 
more free of obstacles. Friends from all quarters 
begin nudging him, saying: Enter, the track is 
clear. Highly proba1:)le is the conjecture that he 
had his inner struggle over the decision; but at 
last he must have heard the imperative call to him- 
self and to himself alone. 

Looking backwards through nearly half a cen- 
tury, we can see that no other choice was in reason 
possible. Seward was his only imi)ortant com- 
petitor; but Seward had been already tried at the 
pinch of his party's destiny, and had been found 
wanting. Li his own State, under his very eyes, 
his ])()liti('al organization had been unthn-niiiied by 
Douglas, producing in it a more serious breach than 
anywhere else in the country. New York City 



THE POLITICAL YEAR 1S60. 465 

was the great center of Republican journalism, 
which was honeycombed through and through with 
Douglasism. \Miere was Seward while this was 
going on? For a time at least he seemed to stand 
paralyzed in doubtful silence. "Who steps forward 
into the breach at the decisive moment in Seward's 
own State? That we have seen Lincoln doing, and 
thus giving proof of his supreme leadership before 
the whole country. 

To his ability was added availability, very need- 
ful for success, even if often accidental. This 
phase of the problem narrowed itself down to the 
question: Who can cany the three uncertain 
States which went for Buchanan in 1856 — Illinois, 
Indiana, Pennsylvania? Not Sew^ard, say their 
delegates in unison, assembled at the Convention. 
But Lincoln had won Illinois in 1858 against 
Douglas, and he was now stronger than then. In- 
diana would follow Illinois, and there was a good 
chance for him in Pennsylvania. So it happened 
this time that the man who had shown himself the 
unquestioned leader of his party possessed also the 
greatest availability. Only one result could fol- 
low: Lincoln received the nomination for Prcsi- 
tlent on the third ballot from the Republican Con- 
vention which assembled at Chicago, May 16, 1860. 

A few paragraphs may be given to the campaign. 
Lincoln stayed at home, made no speech, wrote no 
public letters. AMien the news of the nomination 
reached Springfield, he is rei)orted to have broken 

30 



466 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

loose from the crowd and to have started off home, 
saying, "there is a little woman down on Eighth 
Street who will be glad to hear the news; you 
must excuse me till I inform her." Tradition has 
it that Mary Todd Lincoln as a young lady had 
said she was going to many a man who would be 
President, and now her presentiment has made a 
surprising stride toward fulfilment. But Lincoln's 
dutiful remembrance of the "little woman down on 
Eighth Street" re-echoed over the land in the 
newspapers of the time and won the hearts of the 
gentle sex, who failed not to observe that good 
point in a husband. And many a girl graduate of 
the period cited the anecdote in her little essay at 
the closing exercises of school during the summer 
with adoring approval, and held it up as an exam- 
ple to be followed by all men when married, young 
as well as old. 

Seward added to his laurels by a strong campaign 
in favor of the rival who had carried off the prize 
which he and his friends deemed his by virtue of 
long and eminent service in the cause. Particu- 
larly he spoke to the northern portion of the Free- 
States, reaffirming the irrepressible conflict and 
emphasizing the moral aspect of the struggle with 
slavery. That theme suited the man and his 
audience. The disappointment of his follower 
he not only i)ut down, but transformed it into en- 
thusiasm for the candidate. True nobility of 
character Seward showed, and this it was which 



THE POLITICAL YEAR 1860. 467 

exalted and irradiated his speeclies. The man be- 
hind the words was their own shining commentary. 
Seward was an astute politician, and probably he 
felt that he could not have been elected if nomi- 
nated. Certainly he had often heard such an 
opinion from his undoubted friends. A poll of 
Republican Congressmen taken about this time 
showed that, in the judgment of nearly all of them, 
Seward would not be successful. 

But the service of Seward, though great, was 
not the greatest act of the campaign as a whole — 
this gloiy belongs to the personal canvas of Doug- 
las. Seward's work after all was for his party, or 
a wing of his party; but Douglas now distinctly 
rose above party into the Nation. His all-domi- 
nating theme became the Union, which he knew 
was at stake. His own doctrine of Popular Sov- 
ereignty he did not wholly drOp, but he thrust it 
into the background: ''Believing that the Union 
is in danger, I will make any personal sacrifice to 
save it." He could still give a smart rap at the 
"Black Republicans," but the grand objective 
point of his assault was Southern Secession, about 
which he was better informed than any other pub- 
lic man in the North. At Baltimore, in which city 
was fermenting a good deal of disunionism, he 
boldly declared: "I tell you, my fellow citizens, 
I believe this Union is in danger. In my opinion 
there is a mature plan to break up this Union. I 
beheve the election of a Black Republican to be 



468 ABRAHAM LINCOLN-PART SECOND. 

the signal for that attempt, and that the leaders 
of the scheme desire the election of Lincoln so as 
to have an excuse for disunion." Douglas here 
gives the fruit of his long intercourse at Washing- 
ton with Southerners. Moreover he strikes the 
key-note of his present campaign, yea, of his pres- 
ent political character, which is no longer that of a 
breacher, but is getting to be that of a preserver. 
In this respect he is a new man and turns down a 
new road. The transformation is* striking; what 
transformed him? To be sure, he was always an 
institutional man; herein he and Lincoln were at 
one from the beginning. But the time has brought 
forth the question, not merely of a partisan tri- 
umph, but the very crisis of his institutional world. 
At once he enlists and opens his war for the Union, 
barely a year before the actual war. He, the 
greatest statesman of the past decade of transition, 
Feels and declares a new epoch to be dawning with 
a new problem and mightier than any in the his- 
tory of the government since its formation. 

At once he moved Southward, for he is the only 
man who, with such opinions, would there be tol- 
erated. At Norfolk he was asked if the election of 
Lincoln would justify the Southern States in 
seceding from the Union. "Emphatically no," 
responded Douglas with his leonine emphasis. 
''The election of a man to the rresidency by the 
American people in conformity with the Constitu- 
tion of the United States would not justify any at- 



THE POLITICAL YEAR 1860. 469 

tempt at dissolving this glorious confederacy." 
Thus he took strong position against the right of 
Secession in its hotbed. He acknowledged the 
right of revolution for a just cause, but the election 
of Lincoln furnished no such cause. But how 
about that other Southern goblin, Coercion? Many 
Union men in the South believed that a State, if it 
once seceded, could not be coerced. Listen to 
Douglas: "I think the President, whoever he may 
be, should treat all attempts to break up the 
Union by resistance to its laws as Old Hickory 
treated the nullifiers of 1832." Thus he has pro- 
clairhed to the Southern people quite prophetically 
the consequences of their two fa^'oritc doctrines, 
the right of Secession and the wrong of Coercion. 
Probab-y he did not think he would change their 
purpose, or rather the purpose of their leaders. 
Really he was speaking to the million and more of 
his own personal followers in the Northern and 
Border States, and aligning them internally for 
the coming conflict. That he felt to be his real 
function: to unify the two Union parties against 
disunion. ^Measureless abuse was poured upon 
him by the Southern press, and how small was the 
credit he received from the Northern press! 
Douglas declared early in the canvas that Lincoln 
would be elected, but all the more he seemed to 
feel his mission. The attempts at the fusion of 
his party with the two other parties opposed to 
Lincoln he did not encourage, he believed it could 



470 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

do no good. When he heard in Iowa how the 
October States had voted, he said, "Lincoln is the 
next President. I have no hope and no destiny 
before me but to do my best to save the Union 
from overthrow." At once he turned to the South 
again wdth renewed exhortation and warning, and 
the evening before the November election found 
him at Mobile, having reached the extreme South- 
ern line of secessive Cottonia. 

The Presidential campaign of Douglas in 1860 is 
his greatest public deed in a number of respects, 
much greater, we think, than his debate with 
Lincoln. He probably did not produce much 
change in the South, which was no longer to be 
diverted from its destructive course; but he prac- 
tically united the North, which read his speeches 
and his defiant answers to interrogating Secession- 
ists. He aligned his own party upon the impend- 
ing question of the Union — a service which cannot 
be too highly estimated in view of the darkening 
future. But what about Douglas himself? He 
begins to change, he has gotten a new theme \-cry 
different from his Popular Sovereignt}-. His dc(^})- 
est and best self, his institutional character, is 
rising to the surface and asserting itscU' with all liis 
energy and daring, in the face of fierce opposition. 
He tackles the mad spirit of a whole section of the 
country with un])arall(>led coui'age, and speaks to 
it an impressive warning against the ^^•ay it sirnis 
bent on going. Reallv it inav now In- said that 



THE POLITICAL YEAR 1860. 471 

Douglas in his turn has become prophetic, bearing 
a message of the future to the South, voicing the 
decree of the World-Spirit against any violation of 
the Union, He utters to the Southern Hotspurs 
a kind of apocalypse, prefiguring to them before- 
hand the consequences of their coming deed. This 
was Douglas at his highest. To be sure he said to 
them many other things not so high, drop{)ing 
down at times to what seems now political clap- 
trap. Still he delivered his message very impres- 
sively, the only Northerner who could ha^'c done 
it, and he manifested in his own person as well as 
in word and action the adamantine resolution of 
the united Northern Folk-Soul in case of secession. 
In this campaign Southward there is no doubt 
that Douglas rendered an inestimable service to 
the future President, Lincoln, who seems never to 
have appreciated it. Here comes to light again 
that one limitation of Lincoln — he, the man of 
justice and charity, if there ever was one, cannot 
be charitable, cannot even be just to his great anti- 
type, though the latter has, in the deepest and 
most essential principle, come over to him and is 
co-operating with him in his supreme work, that of 
preserving the Union. For Douglas believed, 
after the nominations of 1860, that Lincoln 
would be elected President, and knew better 
than Lincoln himself what would be the latter's 
main task. Again we must repeat that Douglas 
appreciated Lincoln better than Lincoln appro- 



472 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

ciated Douglas, particularly after their great de- 
bate in Illinois. 

In fact we have to think that the debate had its 
secret effect upon Douglas, who was never after- 
wards quite the same man, and became more and 
more different from the former separative breacher 
Douglas, rending asunder all political parties to 
further his political ambition. Through the words 
of Lincoln and still more through the mighty re- 
sponse of the Folk-Soul to these words, Douglas 
began to undergo an inner change, a kind of con- 
version which, however, did not show itself in any 
open renunciation of old doctrines, but in a new 
attitude toward Lincoln. This became visible in 
the Southern campaign of Douglas in 1860, when 
he told the Southerners that they would not be 
justified in seceding on account of Lincoln's elec- 
tion. In a manner he pleads for Lincoln and for 
the Union under him, the rightful President; such 
is the meaning of his attitude generalh' more than 
of his words. The dual Douglas is being trans- 
formed inwardly, if not outwardly; he is not 
Janus-faced on the subject of the Union, but takes 
character from it and becomes himself unified 
within. But it is not thereby said that he sto})s 
talking his dualism, though this becomes' more and 
more external to his real self. As Lincoln had to 
have his time of Subsidence for working out his 
double condition, so Douglas is going through his 
experience to the same end; he is getting unified 
lik;" l/ni'-olii and indcMnl with Lincoln. 



THE LAST OF THE COMPROMISES. 473 

The fact is that in 1860 Lincohi and Douglas, in 
the deepest element of both of them, had come to- 
gether. That was the institutional element. Moral- 
ly they were still far apart. But the moral ques- 
tion of the wrong of slavery had become, not 
extinguished, but submerged in the preservation 
of nationality, ^^^lich had come to the other? 
Douglas moves to the support of Lincoln as the 
Constitutional President. Their rivaliy is for him 
quite over. In this act Douglas is the great and 
generous and patriotic soul. Lincoln still keeps 
his distrust of that old dual Douglas, not recogniz- 
ing the new transfigured man, whose change has 
been brought about largely by himself. Ah! 
Lincoln! History with a sigh has to record one 
exception against thee: thou couldst renounce all 
thy jealousies — except one; thou couldst forgive all 
thy rivals — except one; thou couldst love all thine 
enemies — except one; thou couldst recognize all 
thy friends — except one; and he, that excepted 
one, is doing just now a greater service to thee and 
thy cause than any other man has ever done or 
could do. 

XIII. 

The Last of the Compromises. 

Between the election of Lincoln and his inaugura- 
tion some four months intervened. The North had 
won its victoiy fairly, constitutionally; the South 
was unwilling to submit. This Union shall pro- 



474 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

ducc no more Slave-States, was the decree of the 
Folk-Soul registered by its vote. But the defeated 
party would somehow reverse the decree, and 
perpetuate the double Union as productive of both 
Slave-States and Free-States. As the South 
threatens secession unless its wish be complied with, 
and as some of her Commonwealths have actually 
begun to secede, the old American method of Com- 
promise will be resorted to again for the purpose 
of averting the new disunion. These four months 
may be characterized as the compromising interreg- 
num, or inter-Presidential chaos. It is true that 
Buchanan is still President; but an Executive 
without AVill in a time which calls more impera- 
tively for Will than any other in our government's 
histoiy, is nearly the same as no Executive at all. 
It is just this Will-less time which the Southern 
extremists seize upon for cariying out their plans. 
After two months of utter imbecilit}^, Buchanan 
allows the triumvirate — Black, Stanton and 
Holt, to whom Dix is afterwards added — to make 
some attempt to stay the process of dissolution. 

Lincoln can only look on from Springfield and 
see liis coming difficulties increase day by day, 
totally unable to interfere. He is, however, in- 
voked from many quarters to give his assent to the 
abandonment of the principle on which has been 
won the political victory of 1860. Leading 
Republicans, especially in the East, urge him to 
compromise the Republican cause by giving up 



THE LAST OF THE COMPROMISES. 475 

the exclusion of slavery from the Territories. The 
New York press begins to waver, as it did in 1858 
in regard to the Senatorial election. Seward is 
uncertain, and Seward's friend. Weed, advocates 
the surrender, at least till he pays a visit to Lincoln 
at Springfield, who has again to bring into line the 
Eastern branch of his own party. "Compromise 
is the American devil," once cried an anti-slavery 
agitator. Certainly it now starts to showing 
itself devilish, even if it once may have been an 
angel of peace. 

Lincoln naturally becomes, during these months, 
the center around which swirl many currents of 
compromise. He has one main answer to all efforts 
at wrenching him from his position. Says he in a 
letter to Kellogg, December 11th: "Entertain no 
proposition for a compromise in regard to the 
extension of slaveiy. The instant you do, they 
have us under again; all our labor is lost, and 
sooner or later must he done over. . . . The 
tug has come, and better now than later." Two 
days afterwards he writes to Washburne: "Pre- 
vent, as far as possible, any of our friends from 
demoralizing themselves and our cause by enter- 
taining propositions for compromise of any sort 
on slavery extension. There is no possible com- 
promise upon it but which puts us under again, and 
leaves all our work to do over again." Such were 
his exhortations to two Congressmen of his State 
who had written to him about the matter. He is 



476 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

set against a renewal of the Missouri line, whose 
abrogation in 1854 he now recognizes to be a 
great stage in the anti-slavery movement. He 
will have nothing to do with Douglas's Popular 
Sovereignty or Eli Thayer's modification of the 
same. "Let either be done, and immediately 
filibustering and extension of slavery recommences .' ' 
On other points which he deems of less importance, 
he is willing to yield, such as the execution of the 
Fugitive Slave Law, the inter-State Slave Trade, 
Slavery in the District of Columbia. But any 
compromise which again opens the extension of 
slavery into the Territories he regards as a base 
surrender of the victoiy already won in a fair fight. 
He will not listen to such a proposition for a 
moment. ''On that point hold firm as with a 
chain of steel." (See Lincoln's Works, Vol. I, for 
letters and statements to this effect.) 

As we look back to these seething and dizzying 
days, we see that Lincoln kept his head amid 
buffets of all sorts from friends and foes. He 
asserted and re-asserted with fresh emphasis that 
this Union must henceforth be Free-State pro- 
ducing only. We begin to feel his Will, his tenacity 
of purpose, which he is often hereafter to show. 
He was requested again and again by prominent 
men of the North and of the South to write a letter 
which would set forth his policy. He declined, 
referring his correspondents to his printed speeches 
and to the Republican platform. At the same tim(> 



THE LAST OF THE COMPROMISES. 477 

he unswervingly affirmed the Union. In the East 
the strong Unionists were inclined to be com- 
promisers, while those opposed to compromise 
(like Greeley and Beecher and other anti-slavery 
men) were weak on the subject of the Union. 
Lincoln had no such cleavage in himself, and would 
not allow it in his party". With him it is the Union 
which must be productive of Free-States, and not 
a dis-united Nation. The one Union, therefore, 
holds the primacy in his view, and not the dual 
Union, which the compromisers were always 
seeking to preserve. Still less did he favor dis- 
union, to which many extreme anti-slaveiy men 
were not averse. 

Turning our eyes to Lincoln's antitype during 
these four months, to Douglas, we find that the 
opposition between the two old rivals is lessening, 
though by no means obliterated. On the other 
hand the strongest antithesis has developed be- 
tween Douglas as unionist, and Jefferson Davis 
as disunionist. Douglas never fails to strike the 
fundamental note of Union with great emphasis 
and power. Says he, speaking in the Senate, 
January 3rd, 1861: "I hold the election of any 
man, no matter who, by the American People 
according to the Constitution furnishes no cause, 
no justification for the dissolution of the Union. 
. . . Secession is wrong, unlawful, uncon- 
stitutional, criminal." Lincoln never piled up 
such a mountain of damnatoiy expletives against 



478 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

secession. On this point Douglas reaches down to 
the deepest consistency of his character, to that 
underlying unity in his conviction which all the 
other rifts of his pohtical career never breached. 
Here, too, he finds his original, elemental oneness 
with Lincoln, whom he can defend in the same 
speech, saying: "I do not beheve the rights of the 
South will materially suffer under the administra- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln." Surely such a statement 
in such a place at such a time by such a man, was 
not only just, but very generous. Would Lincoln 
have shown the same height of generosity to his 
life-long antitypal competitor, the occasion offer- 
ing? He did not, as far as is known, though one 
thinks he might have taken the opportunity to do 
so. Lincoln, tender-hearted, forgiving to all his 
other enemies, even to the disunionists with arms 
in their hands, could never quite get over his anti- 
pathy to the unionist Douglas, even when the latter 
was bearding the Southern Senators in his rival's 
defence. 

Still there existed the old pohtical difference, 
even if it was getting swahowed up in the deeper 
common principle of the two antagonists. Douglas 
did not pretend to have turned RepubUcan dui'ing 
these four months. On the contrary he adhered 
to the old Dual Union, which he sought to preserve ; 
and he still could give a right smart slap at Lin- 
coln's Prelude of "the House divided against 
itself," to which he attributed no small share of 



THE LAST OF THE COMPROMISES. 479 

Southern apprehension which saw in that speech 
"a fatal blow impending over them and over all 
they hold dear on earth." So Douglas consistently 
urged compromise, which Lincoln just as consis- 
tently resisted. For Douglas would still keep the 
Union productive of both Slave-States and Free- 
States, while Lincoln continued to affirm the 
Union as Free-State-producing only. Here, then, 
was their previous difference of opinion as to the 
nature of the Union ; but as to the existence of the 
Union itself they were a unit. And to this last 
issue events were rapidly whirling. 

The spirit of compromise found expression in 
many shapes, but its chief formulation was that of 
Senator Crittenden, from Kentucky. The main 
article of the Crittenden Compromise was the first, 
which proposed as a constitutional amendment that 
slaveiy should be prohibited north of the old Mis- 
souri line, and that south of it ''slavery is hereby 
recognized as existing, and shall not be interfered 
with by Congress, but shall be protected as property 
by all the departments of the territorial govern- 
ment during its continuance." AVhen the terri- 
tory north or south of the line becomes a State, 
its constitution is to settle for it the question of 
slavery'. This is substantially a repeal of Douglas's 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1854, and a 
restoration of the line of 1820. Can the clock of 
the Ages be thus turned backward and made to 
whirl forth a wholly new series of events? Im- 



480 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND 

possible; man cannot yet dictate to the World- 
Spirit, upbraiding it: You have gone wholly 
wrong in this last historic generation; go back 
and do your work over again in the right way. 

Douglas supports the Crittenden Compromise, 
thus undoing his own Repeal out of which has 
evolved the Republican party, as he now sees. For 
it was that Repeal which threw open to freedom all 
the territories, Southern as well as Northern. Of 
course. Republicans could not vote for the Critten- 
den Compromise without cutting off their own heads. 
And yet several of the most influential Republican 
newspapers of the East, such as the Albany Evening 
Journal (Weed), and the New York Times (Ray- 
mond), begin to perform the famous feat of St. 
Denys, walking and also talking with severed head 
held in the hand. What about Seward? To this 
day his attitude is an unsolved enigma. At first 
he, with some of his nearest friends, seems to have 
leaned towards the Crittenden Compromise, but he 
was stiffened at least into silence when he became 
aware of Lincoln's decided opposition. This silence 
however, he broke in the Senate Chamber, January 
12th, 1861, l3y a speech which aroused beforehand 
great expectations. But he did not mention the 
Crittenden Compromise, nor offer any of his own; 
it was a neutral speech, so neutral that it quite 
neutralized itself, and so compromising that it 
could not brace up to the point of supporting any 
Compromise. If it did not affirm tiie Crittenden 



THE LAST OF THE COMPROMISES. 481 

measure, it did not reject the same, and after its 
deliveiy nobody could tell quite where Seward 
stood, perhaps he could not tell himself. In him 
Compromise seems to have worked itself out to a 
kind of self-negation. For if a Presidental election 
cannot fix a result, how can a compromise fix any- 
thing? In fact, Compromise becomes the grand 
unfixer, and so really unfixes itself, and seems to 
have unfixed Seward completely. The people are 
supposed to be the final arbiter at the polls, but if 
you can unsettle their decree, government itself is 
unsettled. The Crittenden Compromise in its 
ultimate trend was the destruction of the Constitu- 
tional rule of the majority. And if this be once 
set aside, where is the end? Not a year will pass 
before the minority will demand another com- 
promise with the renewed menace of dissolving the 
Union. Here, again, Lincoln hit the nail on the 
head (in his letter to Hale, January 11th, 1861): 
" If we surrender to those we have beaten, it is the 
end of us, and of the Government. They will repeat 
the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will 
not pass till we shall have to take Cuba as the 
condition upon which they will stay in the Union." 
This lays bare the very process inherent in Com- 
promise, and shows its negative, indeed self- 
negative character. It can give no peace, least of 
all to itself. It will be invoked again and again to 
nullify the rule of the majority, which the South 
now tackles as its greatest enemy. Lincoln still 

31 



482 ABRAHAM LIXCOLN-PART SECOND. 

further declares that they, the Southerners, have 
had a Constitution, and "Acts of Congress .of their 
own framing" for ''over seventy years"; tliey 
have indeed hitherto ruled the country, "and they 
can never have a more shallow pretext for break- 
ing up the government or extorting a compromise 
than now." Such was his firm attitude towards 
compromising the one essential principle, and 
certainly his contrast with Seward is very striking. 
In the Senate Committee of thirteen, to which 
was referred the Crittenden Compromise, six 
voted for it, seven against it— the latter embracing 
five Republicans and two Southerners from the 
Cotton States, Davis and Toombs. Yet these two 
would have supported it if a majority of the Re- 
publicans had voted that way. But the whole five, 
including Seward, refused to accept the pivotal 
article of Crittenden's measure. There is no 
doubt that Davis and Toombs recognized the full 
bearing of the Compromise in reference to the 
Repubhcan party, whose senators they would have 
furtively chuckled to see undoing the Republican 
victory of 1860. But probably a deeper hope lay 
in the hearts of these two gifted and ambitious 
Southerners of Cottonia: nothing less than the 
destruction of majority rule through its own act. 
For the Southern was already the minority party 
in the nation, and was destined to become more so. 
If the South could make the Constitutional 
majority nullify itself through Compromise, that 



THE LAST OF THE COMPROMISES. 483 

were better and more certain than secession. 
Doubtless good papa Crittenden himself had no 
such ultimate intention by his measure. But 
Davis and Toombs saw in it the domination of the 
Southern minority, or at least the power to neutral- 
ize the Northern majority. Now of course the Re- 
publicans must enter the trap, otherwise they will 
not be caught. Hence that peculiar proviso of 
Davis and Toombs: if the Republican Senators (or 
the most of them), will vote for the Compromise, 
we shall vote for it too; if not, we shall not. For 
once in their lives Davis and Toombs are going to 
vote with the Republicans anyhow, be it yes or no. 
It seems to have been Davis who concocted this 
bright scheme; at least he introduced a rule that 
no report of the Committee should be adopted 
which was not supported by a majority of the 
Republican Senators. So the Crittenden Com- 
promise failed in its birth-place, and could not be 
resuscitated. In fact, no Congressional enactment 
of it would have been valid after the Dred Scott 
decision, which thus becomes the grand obstacle 
to the veiy cause which it was intended to bolster. 
It is often supposed that a Constitutional amend- 
ment embodying the Crittenden Compromise would 
have been adopted by the Northern people, if they 
could have gotten a chance to vote upon it in time. 
But events were not to be halted, and the rapid 
progress of Secession soon rendered allC-ompromise 
purposeless. The Double Union cannot be re- 



48 i ABRAHAM LINCOLN-PART SECOND. 

stored; the alternative begins to appear before the 
Folk-Soul: complete Disunion or complete Union. 
To Lincoln more than to anybody else is due the 
credit that the Nation did not compromise the 
principle that it must be hereafter Free-State- 
producing only. With this surrender would have 
gone the original basic principle of the government, 
the rule of the majority constitutionally expressed. 
There would have been little use for another Presi- 
dential election. Popular government, if it had ac- 
cepted the Crittenden Compromise, would logically 
have voted its own death sentence. A deeper 
conflict than that against slavery begins to appear. 
Hitherto in the famous Compromises, the rule of 
the majority had not been assailed, but had been 
. recognized by both sides, each of which had sought 
to win it as the great boon. But now the rule of 
the legal majority must be set aside, yea, must be 
made to set itself aside. Really the minority will 
dictate to the majority, and the very existence 
of popular government is at stake. Compromise 
having grappled with majority rule gets flung to 
the earth after a hurly-burly contest under a 
variety of shapes during these months. The last 
of the Compromises seeking to keep the State- 
producing Union doubly productive of States, 
free and slave, never came to reahty, though it 
kept floating for months i^efore j:he Folk-Soul as a 
kind of delusive phantom, which was Init the de- 
parted ghost of the old order hovering with longing 



LINCOLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL. 485 

and love over the scenes of its once throbbing life. 
But it is high time that these ghostly performances 
be laid, and that the unearthly dance of the spooks 
which have so long been in possession of the 
Capitol, be banned forever. And here comes 
Lincoln, the new man bringing the new order, with 
a paper in his pocket proclaiming the same, now 
to be inaugiu'ated as President of the United 
States. Let us listen to his memorable document. 

XIV. 

Lincoln's First Inaugural. 

At last the four months' agonizing suspense be- 
gins to draw to a close, and Lincoln starts out on 
his journey from Springfield to Washington. This 
journey was a continuous line of speeches, whose 
chief object was to say nothing. Not a great suc- 
cess nor a great failure was it, under the condi- 
tions: to keep the mind always shut and the 
mouth always open. Once indeed he did say that 
he might have to put his foot down firmly, but he 
immediately apologized for his indiscretion. Of 
course there was a great deal of criticism on what 
he said, and more yet on what he did not say, for 
everybody expected a hint of his policy. Then 
there was an element of the grotesque in Lincoln 
from start to finish — both conscious and uncon- 
scious — and it did not fail him on this trip. As he 
moved into the formal East, the Mepliistoi)helcs 



486 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

of the Press gloated over his shocking lack of dig- 
nity with no little mockery. How different from 
our previous two Eastern Presidents, the elegant 
Yankee Franklin Pierce, dubbed the parlor Presi- 
dent, and smooth-worded diplomatic James Buch- 
anan of unfathomable tortuosity. And then just 
think of it! The President-elect of the United 
States wore black kid gloves in New York at the 
opera on a festal night. "A simple Susan" from 
the Western prairie in the Presidential chair! cries 
the best-known Republican editor of New England, 
utterly unable to penetrate beneath externals. Of 
course the Southern newspaper triumphantly com- 
pared Lincoln with the cultured and experienced 
Jefferson Davis, President of the new Southern 
Confederacy. Then that final serio-comic flight 
in disguise through Baltimore to the Capital ! Let 
the whole thing pass, for really it amounts to noth- 
ing, as if Zeus or the World-Spirit was having a 
little fun all to himself before proceeding to the 
serious, yea tragic business at hand. 

But omitting many preliminary incidents of 
lesser interest, let us witness Lincoln on March 
4th, 18G1, ill the act of passing into the Presi- 
dency. He has reached the east portico of the 
Capital where he is to take the oath of office ad- 
ministered by Chief-Justice Taney, the author of 
the Dred Scott decision, which, Lincoln declared 
not long after its jjromulgation, must be reversed 
in time by the Court itself or by the People. That 



LINCOLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL. 487 

was not yet four years since. In a sense they 
must be deemed antagonists, representing two 
opposite political tendencies. The Dred Scott de- 
cision has not been reversed openly, but a long 
stride has been made in that direction. Antago- 
nists they are, and some months later Taney will 
directly tackle Lincoln in the Merry man case, per- 
taining to the suspension of Habeas Corpus. But 
Lincoln will meet triumphantly in deed and word 
the Chief-Justice, who, with the narrowness of 
the technical lawyer would assert one clause of 
the Constitution, and let the whole Constitution 
and the government back of it go to ruin, through 
the hostility of its destroyers protected by the 
Supreme Court. Taney, Jackson's appointee, grap- 
ples with a President who has Jackson's will with- 
out his willfulness, and the Jacksonian Chief- 
Justice has to receive an application of the most 
famous of Jackson's utterances, that the Nation's 
Executive, as co-ordinate Power of the Govern- 
ment, must execute the Constitution "as he under- 
stands it." Still very gently, though very firmly 
is the thing done, and the Chief-Justice is estopped 
from ■ using the Constitution to protect the de- 
stroyers of the Constitution. There is, however, 
not the least intention of interfering with the Su- 
preme Court in its legitimate sphere, for Lincoln 
is himself a lawyer and thoroughly institutional in 
spirit. But the downwright weakness of the last 
two Executives (Pierce and Buchanan), and the 



488 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

flat mediocrity of the whole line of post-Jacksonian 
Presidents up to Lincoln, had fostered in Taney, 
who was Chief-Justice during this whole period 
an exaggerated sense of his importance which the 
life-tenure of his office did not diminish. The re- 
sult was some tendency to usurpation, some bent 
to take in hand political questions, which did not 
belong to the judicial sphere. This tendency cul- 
minated in the Drcd Scott decision, which as one 
Supreme Judge and perhaps the ablest (Curtis) de- 
clared, lay outside the jurisdiction of Court. That 
was also the opinion of Lincoln, who has, therefore, 
to recover the full executive Power from the hands 
of Taney, or at least to prevent the possibility of 
his interference with the Presidential function at 
critical moments. This our new President does 
effectually both in action and in argument (see his 
Message to Congress July 4th, 18G1). So Lincoln 
has to assert his great office against the man who 
may be called his judicial adversary, who now ad- 
ministers to him the oath "to preserve, protect, 
and defend the Constitution of the United States," 
the whole of it, not merely a part of it; and v/e 
may also hear Lincoln swear to Taney, "I will 
faithfully execute the office of President of the 
United States," the whole of it, not merely a part 
of it. 

Very prominent at the inauguration we must 
note another man, entirely different from Taney, 
yea the reverse of him, but still a lawyer — William 



LINCOLX'S FIRST IX AUGURAL. 489 

H. Seward. Taney represents the Formal Law, 
to the last degree of formality; Seward has uttered 
the Higher Law, quite divested of, if not hostile to 
all Form. One thinks that in this respect the two 
halves ought to be put together and made over 
into a whole. In fact they are essentially synthe- 
sized in Lincoln, whom we have already seen try- 
ing to preserve Form and Spirit, even when these 
get to fighting desperately. Seward has been, if 
not quite the adversary, at least the rival of Lin- 
coln in the same party. At present he is the 
chosen Secretary of State, and head member of 
the new cabinet. There is no doubt that Seward 
deemed himself not only the right hand of the in- 
coming President, but practically the President 
himself. His private correspondence of this time 
has been published, and it makes him appear to 
himself the central power as well as the savior of 
the country. To his mind the Presidency had 
become divided like himself; there was indeed the 
formal President Lincoln, but the Higher Presi- 
dent was Seward. And his Section, the old North- 
Eastern States, held the same opinion of his su- 
premacy. The tall Illinois sucker might perform 
the Presidential motions, but Seward was to pull 
the strings. So Lincoln is yet to have quite a 
little tussle with his own chief officer, who, how- 
ever, in spite of his egotism, has the transcendent 
merit of being able to learn his lesson, and who 
will, after more experience, frankly declare of his 



490 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

superior: ''The President is the best of us." And 
Lincohi when he gets Seward duly placed will in 
turn fully recognize his great Secretary and cling 
to him against all opposition. So the new Presi- 
dent at his inauguration has before him those two 
somewhat dislocated, yet opposite talents, Taney 
and Seward, the excessive Formal Law and the 
Higher Law; but he will be able to subordinate 
both, and have them do their proper work, each 
in his own sphere, toiling at his allotted task. 
Characteristic is the report that Taney once de- 
clared at Washington, that he would refuse to ad- 
minister the Constitutional oath to Seward, if the 
latter were elected President. 

It is important to observe that Lincoln in his 
Inaugural does not fail to glance at the two col- 
liding Laws, and perchance indirectly at their 
representatives before him. The Higher Law had 
been unfolded and promulgated chiefly in connec- 
tion with the Fugitive Slave enactments. Lincoln 
reads the clause of the Constitution wliich deals 
with persons "held to service or labor in one State 
and escaping into another," and which commands 
their rendition. This Enacted Law must be 
obeyed, especially by all who take an oath to sup- 
port the Constitution, notwithstanding the Higher 
Law . From Seward we may then imagine Lincoln 
turning to Taney, in thought if not in look. Says 
the Inaugural : ''If the policy of the Government 
upon vital questions affecting the whole People is 



k 



LINCOLX'S FIRST IX AUGURAL. 491 

to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Su- 
preme Court, the instant they are made, the People 
will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to 
that extent practically resigned their Government 
into the hands of that eminent tribunal." No 
such judicial autocracy can be permitted in accord 
with the Constitution itself. So much for these 
two extremes, Taney and Seward, with their one- 
sided, deeply colliding principles, who are now in 
presence of their higher synthesis and master. 

The key-note of the inaugural is the Primacy of 
the Union, with the consequent denial of the right 
of Secession, and the consequent affirmation of 
the right of Coercion, even if this last is very 
gently put. It is noteworthy as indicating the 
drift of Lincoln's thought that he places together 
the two opposite Higher Laws, the one in the 
North which resists the Fugitive Slave clause of 
the Constitution, and the one in the South which 
resists the Slave Trade clause of the Constitution. 
In both cases it is "the moral sense of the commu- 
nity" which challenges the established Law. In 
Massachusetts it is difficult legally to condenm the 
slave, in South Carolina it is difficult legally to 
condemn the slaver, though both be brought to 
trial. Lincoln fails not to express his own moral 
conviction against slavery, though he must execute 
the Constitution as it stands. But at present the 
conservation of the Union must be his supreme 
object, everything else is subordinate. "No State 



492 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

of its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the 
Union;" State caprice must be subjected to law. 
"In view of the Constitution, the Union is un- 
broken," in spite of all this secession. 

But there is a third person present at this In- 
augural more interesting and more important than 
Seward or Taney or any other man in the Nation 
except the President himself. That is Lincoln's 
life-long antitype, Stephen A. Douglas, who has 
taken a front seat on the stand just behind Lin- 
coln as the latter reads to the assembled thous- 
ands in a clear, firm, penetrating voice his ad- 
dress. Typical was the position and attitude of 
the Little Giant, who said to an acquaintance 
that he intended to show ''his determination to 
stand by the new Administration in the perform- 
ance of its first great duty to maintain the 
Union." LTpon this point it cannot be too often 
repeated that he and Lincoln were at one from 
the beginning. Douglas now advances openly to 
the support of his old antagonist upon the over- 
shadowing issue of the time, and brings with him- 
self, if need be, a million of bayonets. And what 
is more important, there comes in his train a 
united North, to which he alone adds a majority 
of the peojjlc of the Border Slave States. The 
Presidential election of 18G0 had shown the j^ro- 
digious personal influence of Douglas, which was 
proljably grc^ater than that of Lincoln at the time 
of the Inaui:;ural. 



LIXCOLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL. 493 

And now occurs an incident, trivial enough ex- 
ternally, which impressed the thousands there 
present, who saw it, which has struck the millions 
who have since read it, and still read it, as some- 
thing deeply symbolic of the two antitypes as well 
as of the Nation and its coming destiny. Lincoln 
rose to read his address, w4th cane and manuscript 
in hand ; but he was at a loss where to place his 
high silk hat, that original Post Office of his, every 
available spot being occupied. As he looked help- 
lessly around, Douglas sprang up and relieved him 
of his encumbrance, remarking to a lady near by: 
"If I can't be President, I can at least hold his 
hat." It was indeed a very beautiful act of 
courtesy, but in it Douglas also expressed his will- 
ingness, yea, his eagerness to help the man who 
had been hitherto his chief rival in the latter's 
supreme emergency, which was also that of the 
Nation. Such was the symbolic act of Douglas 
at Lincoln's inauguration, as significant and as 
eloquent in its way as the President's address, 
which it reinforced mightily with its unspoken 
message. 

Nor should we fail to see that Lincoln's Inau- 
gural has its relation to Douglas, even more de- 
cisively than to Taney and Seward. In it we find 
the former differences between Lincoln and 
Douglas hardly mentioned, certainly not empha- 
sized. The territorial question is passed over 
with one or two non-partisan allusions. The con- 



494 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

flict of the Illinois Debate of 1858 is sunk in a far 
deeper struggle, upon which both the former an- 
tagonists are practically united. In fact, Lincoln 
made changes in the first draft of his Inaugural 
which would indicate that he had Douglas in 
view. He wrote at Springfield: "Having been 
elected on the Chicago platform, I hold myself 
bound to follow the principles therein declared" 
— the main principle of that platform being the 
Congressional exclusion of slavery from the Terri- 
tories as against Douglas's Popular Sovereignty. 
This partisan utterance Lincoln cut out at Wash- 
ington, Seward suggesting it, and still more, the 
new situation imperiously dictating it. Other 
changes from the original draft (see it in Nicolay 
and Hay's Life of Lincoln, Vol. III.) point to the 
same source of adjustment. For Lincoln realized 
more than ever when he reached the Capital, the 
pivotal position of Douglas, who wielded the 
power of uniting or of separating the North. The 
Inaugural, therefore, has little or nothing to which 
Douglas could object. Indeed, it asserts the pre- 
servation of the Double Union; it has not a word 
about* this Nation "becoming all one thing or all 
the other." Even the Union is not affirmed to 
be Free-State producing only. These two princi- 
j)les are not, however, abjured by Lincoln, but are 
held in abeyance. For his great immediate prob- 
lem is to unite the parties of the North against 
secession, and to join to them the Unionists of 



LINCOLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL. 495 

the Border Slave States. The Inaugural is skill- 
fully adjusted to that end. The man whom he 
has to win above all others is Douglas, who in 
many ways has shown himself ready to be won. 
He called upon Lincoln at the White House to 
pay his respects to the new President, and there is 
little doubt that he whispered in the ear of his 
successful rival his support of every effort to main- 
tain the Union. In fact there had probably been 
some communication between them before inau- 
guration day. At any rate the Inaugural seeks to 
avoid giving any offence to Douglas and his fol- 
lowers. In the Senate two days after its delivery 
Douglas nobly declared : ''It is a peace offering 
rather than a war message." 

Still it cannot be said that the two Giants were 
as yet completely harnessed together into one 
team. Both were indeed pulling for the Union, 
but each was still inclined to reach the goal by a 
somewhat different road. Douglas continued to 
be openly for the Double Union, which he sought 
to restore by peace. Hence on March 15th, he 
offered a resolution in the Senate to withdraw the 
United States troops from all forts in the seceded 
States except Key West and Tortugas, which he 
still deemed national. Says he: '"T proclaim 
boldly the policy of those with whom I act ; we are 
for peace. . . . War is disunion; war is final, 
eternal separation." So Douglas unquestional)ly 
thought; and such seemed to him at that time the 



496 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

only road back to Union, even if the years will 
prove him mistaken. In one way his policy was 
correct: We, the Unionists, must not be the ag- 
gressors, if we would unite the whole North and 
divide the South, In the same speech (March 
15th) he opposed the blockade of the Southern 
ports as illegal and impolitic. Says he: "I cannot 
consent that the President of the United States 
may, at his discretion, blockade the ports of the 
United States, or of any other country." Thus 
he still shows a point of conflict with Lincoln. His 
purpose is manifestly twofold; he would, on the 
one hand, restore the old Union through peace, 
but on the other especially, he would hold back 
the Administration from precipitating the armed 
collision by giving the first blow. In the former 
case he did not, and coirid not, succeed; in the 
second, he succeeded, for the South soon commits 
the pivotal act of aggression. 

And now the reader has to ask : Did Lincoln on 
his part appreciate the generous support given 
him by his ancient rival, or did he still feel that 
lurking suspicion of Douglas which had so long 
hounded him like a curse? We have no statement 
of Lincoln on this point ; but we may take as an 
indirect reflection of his feeling the view of his 
two private secretaries in their biography of him: 
"Recognizing his defeat, Douglas was by no means 
conquered. Already in a Senate debate he had 
opened his trenches to undermine and wreck Lin- 



LINCOLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL. 497 

coin's Administration. Already he had set his 
subtle sophistry to demonstrate that the revenue 
laws gave the Executive no authority for co- 
ercion. . . . His speech of the 15th of March 
was only a new instance of his readiness to risk 
his consistency and his fame for a plausible but 
delusive move in party strategy." (Nicolay and 
Hay's Lije of Lincoln, Vol. 4, pp. 80, 82). The 
language of this extract recalls Lincoln's designa- 
tion of Douglas as ''the sapper and miner." 

We cannot help thinking that his old jealousy 
still crops out in these words of men used to writing 
down his dictations. But the attitude of Douglas 
in his speech of March 15th, has, to the impartial 
reader, a different motive from that here given. 
He did not pretend to be a Republican, he was 
still for the Dual Union restored through peace. 
It is true that Douglas was a "miner and sapper" 
of all political parties as such, his own party in- 
cluded ; but he never failed to draw the line at the 
Union, which he would not breach. And even 
now his deepest motive is to unite the North and 
divide the South by holding the Administration 
back from any act of aggression. Forbear, for- 
bear, till the South strikes the first blow against 
the Union, and we shall then all be of one mind — 
that is the true explanation of Douglas, and con- 
sistent with all his recent sayings and doings. He 
is, accordingly, in the deepest of him, co-operating 
with Lincoln and the Union, though he marches 

32 



498 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

along his own road in consonance with his own 
political principle. And it is well that he so 
marches, for he, the masterful leader, is bringing 
with him his own party in the Northern and Bor- 
der States, and is thus uniting the forces of the 
Union. 

So we still have to declare that Lincoln has not 
yet attained the full appreciation of the deepest 
strain in the character of his life's incarnate coun- 
terpart, of his other Self, of his antitype, Douglas. 
Lincoln does not yet see that the time has brought 
together the colliding opposites of a quarter of a 
century in a deeper unity, has joined the two per- 
sonal halves in a greater whole; Lincoln does not 
yet see that himself and Douglas have at last 
reached down to that common institutional sub- 
strate in which they are both of one spirit. But 
that is just what Douglas recognizes, proclaims 
and reinforces in Lincoln, despite a difference of 
policy. The universal love, which has been the 
chief discipline of the inner life for Lincoln, cannot 
quite become universal; the one exception will 
rise to the surface after being consigned seemingly 
again and again to the abysses of the soul's ob- 
livion. The spiritual problem of Lincoln is to de- 
racinate that unworthy tormenting jealousy which 
he has so long felt and still feels toward the rival 
of a life-time, who is now in the deepest matter 
his voluntary co-woi-ker. Lincoln, can you not 
requite Douglas's faith in you, repeatedly uttered 



THEIR LAST MEETING. 499 

in word and deed, with an equal faith in him? To 
be sure he has asked no such requital from 
you, but has gone ahead in the support of you 
for the sake of the common cause even under 
your suspicion. Is it not time that you give back 
a little of what you get, and clean out that one 
nook of uncharitableness in your otherwise ten- 
derly forgiving, unavenging heart? 

But while we may conceive the inteiTogation 
to be pending before Lincoln's conscience, the 
rapid whirl of events has brought on the grand 
opening act of the coming drama — the firing on 
Fort Sumter. The South has struck the first 
blow, has done the first unequivocal deed of vio- 
lence, and the Civil War has actually began. The 
new situation is suddenly uncurtained ; what Doug- 
las insisted upon waiting for, has come with a 
rush; what Lincoln tried to prevent has happened 
anyhow, by the decree of a mightier Giant than 
either or both of the human Giants, mightier in- 
deed than the Nation itself. The horologe of the 
World's History is tolling a new epoch in the re- 
verberation of the cannon over Charleston Harbor, 

XV. 

Their Last Meeting. 

The five weeks between the Inaugural and the 
attack on Sumter witnessed Lincoln's only time of 
peace, and it was not very peaceful. Prcpara- 



500 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

tions for war resounded from the Cotton States. 
There were still many phantoms of Compromise 
floating about on the air, distracting the pub- 
lic mind but utterly unreal and unrealizable. 
Hardly more than spectres they were of the old 
Double Union now giving up the ghost which 
somehow still tarried on this side of Styx, and 
kept bothering Lincoln a good deal and others 
even more . But at the roar of the gunnery from 
Sumter echoing through the land, they took flight 
to Hades, there to be imprisoned forever, except 
when they may be evoked to flit a momentary 
shadow across the page of History. 

During this time Lincoln had also a kind of do- 
mestic struggle in getting control of his cabinet 
which contained past competitors with him for 
the Presidency, and possible future candidates 
against him. Especially Seward and Chase were 
prominent in this peculiar struggle. But Lincoln's 
chief contest during these five weeks was with the 
State of Virginia, mother of the Union and of 
Presidents, now represented by her convention of 
unionists, who were going to dictate to the Presi- 
dent of the Union or turn disuniouists. The Vir- 
ginia consciousness has become painfully dual: 
secession is wrong, but this wrong cannot be 
righted without committing wrong. Nay more, if 
the Nation dares right the wrong of secession, 
Virginia herself will seccnlo, will do the very act 
which she declares to be wrong, and will join sira- 



THEIR LAST MEETING. 501 

ilar wrong-doers whom she has condemned, and 
even will lead other States into doing her wrong. 
All this she may deem a sophistical juggle of 
words; but the inexorable logic of History will 
flay her for her deed more than any other State, 
and leave her rent in twain forever — the lasting 
realization of her dual conduct. Such is the his- 
toric fact; does it not evidence chc penalty of 
her wrong imposed by the Supreme Tribunal of 
the World-Spirit? Lincoln, grandson of Virginia, 
tried to rescue her from that awful mill of the 
Gods, but she would not hear him, and so she was 
ground almost into the dust of the grave, by the 
outer conflict as well as by her own inner contra- 
diction. 

Lincoln has resolved to apply a little test to 
that double-acting Virginia Convention which is 
for the Union but against its maintenance, and 
which has shown itself so completely devoid of 
the old statesmanship of the Commonwealth. He 
is going to "send bread to Anderson," who badly 
needs it, having only "pork and water" for ra- 
tions. Let South Carolina, and Virginia too if 
she will, construe that gentle act of humanity to 
relieve a few starving soldiers in a time of peace 
as an act of war, and open fire ; one thing is cer- 
tain: the first shot will unite the North and divide 
the South. Very dexterous and timely is this 
plan of Lincoln; Virginia must quit her balanc- 
ing between two opposite principles which has 



302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

kept the whole Nation in a state of suspense and 
paralysis. She must now decide whether her hate 
of Coercion at the least is stronger than her love 
of the Union at the largest. Another even deeper 
.question lies before her: Shall the rule of the ma- 
jority or of the minority prevail in this Nation? 
In his epoch-making Inaugural Lincoln has not 
failed to drive home this point: "the rule of a 
minority as a permanent arrangement is wholly 
inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority prin- 
ciple, anarchy or despotism is all that is left." 
Virginia shows that she will dictate to the ma- 
jority or go out of the Union, and that is her 
Unionism, which, it is plain, must pass through a 
complete regeneration . 

Some 6,000 gallant South Carolinians opened 
their batteries ui)on the brcadless soldiers of Fort 
Sumter, just 77 in number (exclusive of 51 non- 
combatants, laborers and musicians) on the 12th 
of April, 1801, and precipitated the Civil War. 
Anderson, after a stout-hearted defense, capitu- 
lated on the 13th with the honors of war; he and 
his garrison sailed North the next day. Such was 
the result of Lincoln's attempt to "send bread to 
Anderson" who had to make his fight on "pork 
and water." South Carolina possesses Fort Sum- 
ter, the first blow has been struck, coercion in its 
least possible form has been resisted In' arms, the 
alignment of both sides for battle at once takes 
place. 



THEIR LAST MEETING. 503 

The fall of Sumtor was kno\vn in Washington 
fully by Sunday, April the 14th, and was read on 
the same day throughout the country. Indigna- 
tion from all parts began to roll in oceanic waves 
toward the Capital as the center of power. The 
cabinet met and Lincoln read to them his tlraft of 
a proclamation which called 75,000 militia into 
service for three months, and convened Congress 
in extra session on the coming 4th of July. Excited 
multitudes streamed into the White House to 
hear what might be the word of the leader; tele- 
grams began to pour in from the Northern States 
with strong advice and stronger offers; Senators 
and Representatives tarrying in Washington after 
the adjournment of Congress pledged their con- 
stituencies to the support of the Government . It 
was known that one of those remaining behind in 
the Capital and watching closely the rapid whirl 
of events was Stephen A. Douglas. Him above 
all men Lincoln probably most desired to see just 
then, but hartlly dared openly to send for him. 
Douglas, however, di(.l not wait for the invitation; 
through a friend he requested an interview with 
Lincoln on that same Sunday evening at the Ex- 
ecutive Mansion between seven and eight o'clock 
P. M. At the appointed time Douglas, appeared, 
and Lincoln was ready also, having dismissed or 
evaded the importunate throng of visitors. 

It is recorded that they sat together in private 
conversation for nearly two hours, no other per- 



504 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

son being present , Nothing of what they said has 
been handed down, as far as we have been able to 
find. Lincoln seems never to have talked about 
it afterwards. We may well suppose that he, 
first of all, submitted his proclamation to the keen 
eye of Douglas for suggestion and approval. As 
already said, the word of Douglas meant a united 
North and a divided South, and Lincoln knew it ; 
hence he rightly felt that before he sent forth 
that war-call to the country, he must have on it 
the stamp of Douglas. And he gets it. The 
next morning along with the proclamation, the 
newspapers gave the account of the Lincoln-Doug- 
las interview, and the authorized statement of 
Douglas that ''he was prepared to sustain the 
President in the exercise of all his Constitutional 
functions to preserve the Union and maintain the 
Government, and defend the Federal Capital," 
"though he was still unalterably opposed to the ad- 
ministration on all its political issues," that is, on 
the special objects of the Republican party in re- 
gard to the Territories. Let it be noted that this 
exception is really in favor of Lincoln and the 
Union, for Douglas could hardly have made his 
followers Republicans, at least not so suddenly, 
but he could and did keep them firm LTnionists, 
and in so far supporters of the administration. 
The fact is that since the inauguration, Lincoln 
and Douglas were both jnirsuing the same end 
though by different roads : to keep the peace in all 



THEIR LAST MEETING. 505 

forbearance till the South breaks it first, to the eye 
of the whole Nation. To be sure, distinguished 
Southern writers since that time have maintained 
that the bombardment of Sumter was not the first 
aggressive act of the war, but resistance to the 
previous aggression of the North, that it was 
merely defensive, and so on, with varied subtle 
argumentation. But the Nation as a whole did 
not then, and does not still take that view, and it 
was. the Nation which practically had to decide 
the matter. 

So much, then, must have been agreed upon in 
that interview between Douglas and Lincoln; but 
anything else? Undoubtedly, though the manner 
of it will probably remain forever unknown. We 
may, therefore, be permitted to infer from their 
subsequent action their conversation, imagining it 
to culminate in a dramatic scene when the Little 
Giant, impulsively generous, jumps up from his 
seat, throws back that leonine head of his with its 
massive shock of hair, and thus bursts out to his 
life-long rival : 

Douglas. Mr. President, I wish to enlist under 
you, in obedience to that call. 

Lincoln (rising). Then you will be my first en- 
listed man in the war for the Union. 

Douglas. That is just what I wish to be. I 
am at your service. 

Lincoln. Well, to confess to you my secret 
thought, I have had you uppermost in my mind 



506 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

for weeks. You can do more for me than any 
other hving man. 

Douglas. What are your orders? 

Lincoln. I have ah^eady thought of asking you 
to go to our common North-West and unify its 
people in one mass of hving valor, which will 
sweep down the Mississippi, in case of necessit}^, 
and keep its great Valley, the seat of the coming 
Nation, in the Union. 

Douglas. You outline my own purpose. I had 
already intended to do something of that sort 
myself. 

Lincoln. Yes, I note that our minds at last 
begin to run together. But I want to say that 
you are the only man, in my opinion, who can do 
that deed, the most important national deed to 
be done just at present. 

Douglas. Yes, I note that you begin at last to 
find me out. But I must be off; I think we 
understand each other now. Good-bye; in a few 
days I shall start for my new task, which I shall 
perform, if it kills me. 

Lincoln. God speed you, the first enlisted man 
in the cause of the Union, and I must add, the 
greatest. With you I seem already to have won; 
without you I would hardly have dared to start. 

Bending a courteous nod of the head Douglas 
springs out of the door into the night and soon 
disappears in the surging multitude. This was the 
last important meeting (Douglas seems to have 



LAST DEED AND DEATH OF DOUGLAS. 507 

made a parting call a day or two later) of the two 
great rivals, whose hitherto antipathetic lives have 
now attained, through long and strong opj^osition, 
that common bond of sympathy which underlay 
both from the beginning. 

Such, then, is the final outcome of our two anti- 
types, whose contradictory careers we have fol- 
lowed for more than a quarter of a century, till 
they have reached and recognized their unity, 
which is likewise the unity of their country. So 
long has it taken them to find each other out. 
One cannot help asking whether Lincoln, with his 
innate tendency to brooding and melancholy, may 
not have afterwards had some resurgences of 
doubt and jealousy of his old competitor. That 
single exception to his magnanimity, that excepted 
Douglas, whose distrust had struck such deep roots 
into Lincoln's character, could probably not be 
eradicated at once. But one fact stands out 
strongly: Douglas was soon speeding westward 
from the Capital on his new mission, which was also 
destined to be the chmax and the conclusion of 
his life's work. 

XVI. 

Last Deed and Death of Douglas. 

Along his route everywhere it soon became 
known that Douglas was coming — now the out- 
spoken defender of the Union under the call of the 
newly elected President, whose most strongly sup- 



508 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

ported opponent he had been in the recent can- 
vas. Thus he represented in person by his deed 
the unity of pohtical parties for the Union. A 
word from such a source was intensely longed 
after by the Folk-Soul wherever he went, for he 
now voiced the united Nation better than any 
other public man. 

Very suggestive are his remarks at Bellair^ 
Ohio, April 22d: "The proposition now is to 
separate these United States into little petty con- 
federacies. First divide them into two; and then, 
when either party gets beaten at the next election, 
subdivide again : then, whenever one gets beaten 
again, another subdivision .... and so it 
will go on." This is the logic (or rather tlio dia- 
lectic) of Secession; the separation, if allowed as a 
principle, must continue indefiniteh'', seeking to 
make itself universal. Lincoln had touched upon 
the same thought in his Inaugural: 'Tf a minority 
will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a 
precedent which will in turn divide and ruin them; 
for a minority of their own will secede from them 
whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by 
such minority. . . . All who cherish disunion 
sentiments are being educated to the exact tem- 
per of doing this. . . . Plainly the central 
idea of secession is the essence of anarchy." Thus 
Lincoln strikingly sets forth the inner dialectical 
process of Secession, which is strongly affirmed 
by Douglas in his foregoing speech: "It is not a 



LAST DEED AND DEATH OF DOUGLAS. 509 

question of union or disunion ; it is a question of 
order, of the stability of Government, of the 
peace of communities. The whole social system 
is threatened with destruction and disruption." 
There is no doubt that these words of Douglas 
appealed mightily to the Folk-Soul of the North- 
ern and Border States. He was a living example 
of his own doctrine; he had been beaten at the 
polls in the recent election, and now he proclaims 
acquiescence in the rule of the majority as the 
very ])rinciple of republican government, and in- 
deed of all peace and ordc. ^'^ery striking is his 
contrast with the other defeated candidates, both 
Southerners, Bell 'and Breckinridge, who at last 
became secessionists, preferring minority rule to 
coercion, or to the maintenance of majority rule 
in the Nation. Lincoln, the victorious candidate, 
even though President, could not have produced 
by any speech the overwhelming popular impres- 
sion which Douglas now excited wherever he 
went. For he still upheld that majority rule 
which had turned him under, while Lincoln, up- 
holding it, was felt to be also upholding his own 
personal interest and victory. Prodigious was 
the response of the whole People, not only to the 
doctrine of Douglas (which was the same as that 
of Lincoln), but also to his magnanimity as well 
as to his unselfish patriotism. It is not too much 
to say that Douglas now rises to the most glorious 
period of his total career; his very defeat he turns 



510 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

into a triumph greater than that of his successful 
opponent. 

And so he continues his journey to the North- 
West, the united folk of all parties everywhere 
hugging his path and begging a word from that 
heart which could show so much renunciation for 
the good of the country. At Columbus he was 
called out in the night by a regiment marching 
to the front, for a kind of benediction. 
When he reached Springfield he made before the 
Illinois Legislature a speech, whose extraordinary 
power and influence have been celebrated by a 
reporter otherwise hostile to him, as follows: "It 
was like a blast of thunder. I do not think that 
it is possible for a human being to produce a more 
prodigious effect with spoken words than he pro- 
duced on those who were within the sound of his 
voice. He was standing in the same place where 
I had first heard Mr. Lincoln. . . . That 
speech hushed the breath of treason in ever}^ cor- 
ner of the State." (Horace White in Herndon & 
Weik's Lincoln, II., pp. 126-7). But his reception 
at Chicago, his home, was the most significant and 
triumphant of all. A great multitude, made up 
of every party, met him at the depot and escorted 
him, like a conqueror, to the Wigwam where Lin- 
coln had been nominated the year before. Ten 
thousand people again filled it, shouting a unani- 
mous welcome. lie is now again in harmony with 
the Folk-Soul of his State and of the North-West, 



LAST DEED AND DEATH OF DOUGLAS. 511 

from which he has been ahenated so many years. 
We have seen that since 1850, he has been re- 
peatedly received in Chicago with most emphatic 
signs of pubhc disapproval. That was during his 
breaching, separative period. But now he repre- 
sents the united People more completely than 
Lincoln as he steps upon the platform of the Wig- 
wam, taking, as it were, Lincoln's place in Lin- 
coln's own temple, and performing Lincoln's own 
task of voicing the decree of the World-Spirit to 
the Folk-Soul. That must be deemed the culmi- 
nation of Douglas. 

In his speech he summons all his leonine 
strength and thunders: 'There can be no neutrals 
in this war: only patriots or traitors." So Douglas 
places himself and all his followers on the battle- 
line of the Union. This is Douglas at his most 
colossal moment; but the act is breaking his 
heart. There is a strain of bleeding sorrow gush- 
ing up through his words in spite of his strong 
self-suppression. He confesses that "it is a sad 
task to discuss questions so fearful as civil war," 
which he foretells to be "disastrous and bloody." 
This was his last speech, May 1st, 1861. He took 
to his bed, and in a brief time was dangerously 
ill. His dying message to his boys at Georgetown 
College was: "Tell them to obey the laws and 
support the Constitution of the United States." 
His last breath was an utterance of that institu- 
tional spirit which we have always found under- 



512 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

lying his political conduct, however changeful and 
negative. His death occurred June 3d, at the age 
of 48 years, producing a tragic impression of 
gloom upon the Nation, which had followed so 
intently the final act of his life. 

Such is the end of what we have called the Lin- 
coln-Douglas sexennium, during which these two 
antitypal characters, both truly gigantic, have had 
their long desperate contest upon the arena of 
State and Nation. With this end also concludes 
the second great Period of Lincoln's whole career, 
in which he through many an up and down be- 
comes the supreme national man of his time, 
being chosen the Nation's Executive, its very 
Will in the pinch of its greatest crisis. A drama 
we may deem it with its twinned heroes ever cir- 
cling about each other in a kind of antithetic 
unity. The outcome is that the antitypes have at 
last come together in a common fundamental ele- 
ment of character which both instinctively have 
possessed from the beginning as their deepest in- 
stitutional endowment from their Nation. But 
alack-a-day! one of them dies in the very act of 
supreme reconciliation, which is called forth by 
the danger of that Union with which both of them 
were ingrown in the deepest of their being. The 
close of Douglas bears in it a sublime pathos: his 
highest deed of self-conquest and of harmonious 
mediation with his People kills him, or at least 
brings him face to face with his own individual 
dissolution. 



I 



LAST DEED AND DEATH OF DOUGLAS. 513 

So we must do justice to Douglas, whom the 
biographers of Lincoln generally have been in- 
clined to disparage and to blabken, having ap- 
parently absorbed somewhat of Lincoln's one 
dominating prejudice — that against his life-long 
rival. But History must vindicate the persistent 
institutional character of Douglas from the first to 
the last of his career, even if he regarded political 
parties as legitimate game for his personal ambi- 
tion. But he never did play fast and loose with 
the Union, to whose support he rallied with all 
his strength in the crisis of its supreme danger. 
And we have to repeat that Douglas, especially 
after the great Debate, appreciated Lincoln better 
than Lincoln appreciated Douglas. Lincoln had 
a more universally magnanimous character than 
Douglas, still Douglas was more magnanimous to 
Lincoln than Lincoln to Douglas. Lincoln was 
more humane and more forgiving to all the world 
than Douglas, but less forgiving to Douglas than 
Douglas to him. And that common basic element 
of devotion to the Union, which lay so deep in 
both — Douglas recognized it more fully in Lincoln 
than Lincoln ever recognized it in Douglas. 

Still when all has been said, and both the 
Giants, the little and the big, have been weighed 
in the scales of justice and have impartially re- 
ceived judgment, it will be acknowledged that 
Lincoln was made of a purer clay and was cast in 
a diviner mould than Douglas. He seemed to be- 

33 



514 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART SECOND. 

long to a different and higher order of humanity. 
That sympathy with poor mortahty reaching down 
to the humblest even of a different race, sponta- 
neously pulsed upward like, an Artesian well out of 
Lincoln's heart, but hardly out of Douglas's. Not 
only no Slave-State shall be born hereafter of the 
American Union, but no slave shall ever again 
open his eyes on American soil — that was the 
principle and the achievement of Lincoln, but not 
of Douglas. The Genius of Civilization, the Spirit 
of the Age took Lincoln as its bosom confidant 
and communicated to him its secret decree for the 
future; but it whispered no such lofty evangel to 
Douglas, who, however, came at last to feel some- 
thing of the sort through Lincoln. And the su- 
preme test of the truly Great Man of any time or 
clime, that of making himself the mediator be- 
tween the World-Spirit and the Folk-Soul of his 
Nation in its pivotal crisis, can be triumphantly 
applied to Lincoln ; but to such high office Doug- 
las can lay no supereminent claim except for a 
time possibly on that last journey of his when he 
bore to his people Lincoln's message, which had 
also become deeply his own. 

And yet in Lincoln we long to find one thing 
which we cannot: some brief word of recognition 
for his rival's great deed of service and self-denial. 
A little eulogy over the grave of Douglas would 
have well befitted Lincoln's lips, but they are 
silent. Still we cannot help thinking that out of 



LAST DEED AXD DEATH OF DOUGLAS. 515 

his generous heart in some self-communing moment 
burst forth a repentant confession: "That man I 
did not fully recognize; even in the final act of 
him I was still afraid that he would breach the 
Union, but he died defcntling it to his uttermost . 
Gladly would I confess to him my mistake, but it 
is too late; his last deed and death have brought 
home to me my own shortcoming. Farewell, 
my first enlisted man and the greatest — also the 
first hero to die for the Union. Henceforth I must 
go on without thee, quite alone." 



part Zbixb. 

We have now reached the last and briefest 
Period of Lincoln, yet altogether the most event- 
ful and best known. Hardly four years does it 
continue, but it shows Lincoln's practical achieve- 
ment, his true realization. He passes to the exe- 
cution of what he has hitherto simply uttered and 
fornuilated. So he is distinctively the Nation's 
Executive, moving from word to deed. Taking 
in the whole sweep of this quadrennium, we see 
that he is to make actual his utterance: "This 
(510) 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 517 

Nation cannot, endure half slave and half free." 
He indeed voiced the decree of the World-Spirit 
in his far-reaching Prelude of the Lincolniad, as 
we have elsewhere termed it; but now he has 
been chosen to be the doer also, the executor of 
that same decree. The Presidency means essenti- 
ally Will, verily the Will of the whole People in- 
corporate in one individual. Strange lot fallen 
out of the skies upon that country lawyer from 
the North-West, c^uite without administrative ex- 
perience of any kind ! Will, then, he is to mani- 
fest in a supreme degree, institutional Will as 
distinct from caprice or obstinacy; the central 
Will of his immediate cabinet he is to show him- 
self as well as of the remotest members of the 
Nation. At the same time we must not leave out 
of his psychical composition the realm of his Feel- 
ing, that which is celebrated in hundreds of anec- 
dotes under the names of Sympathy, Heart, Love. 
Indeed, he had to guard against his emotional 
nature, which might make him at times too 
lenient, through Secretary Stanton, who was 
naturally the opposite of Lincoln in this regard. 
Just as great as his Feeling and his Will was his 
Litellect, embracing what is often calletl sagac- 
ity, insight, genetic thought. Compared with 
Seward, who was a man of erudition, of reflec- 
tion, and of keen dialectical subtlety, Lincoln 
must be deemed the positive thinker within his 
range, which was political, being able to pcne- 



518 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THLRD. 

trate with his mind the soul of the object under 
consideration, to grasp and utter its creative es- 
sence. 

If the three basic activities of the Human Spirit 
be FeeHng, Will and Intellect, we have to say 
that Lincoln manifested them all in a peculiarly 
high degree of completeness. What a contrast 
was he to the preceding will-less Executive! 
Buchanan must be taken as the final embodiment 
of the old Double Union, its attempted equilib- 
rium between the Free-States and the Slave- 
States, its everlasting balancing and tetering be- 
tween the two sides, which reached quite the 
point of national paralysis, and in his case, of in- 
dividual paralysis, of Will. It is not too much to 
say that the Nation could see a picture of itself at 
that time in the doubleness and vacillation of- the 
Chief Executive. And it will have to be added 
that the last decade before 1861 of Southern 
statesmanship under Northern Presidents had 
brought the Nation to this stage of inner dualism 
and will-lessness — almost to the point of letting 
the Nation fall asunder of itself in peace. Now 
it was at this point that Lincoln took hold and 
began to re-unite the separating parts into a new 
Whole, which is indeed his gr(>at work. We have 
sought to trace him united within after having 
had his time of dualism, and then he is ready to 
make his cardinal utt(>rance that the Nation's 
dualism must come to an end, as did his own. 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 519 

As a divided Self, he never could have unified the 
Nation. 

Moreover Coercion, so hateful to the South, 
means Will — the Union declares itself also to be 
a Will, which is to be exerted antl enforced 
through the Chief Executive. But tiie doctrine of 
the Southerners, even of the most of the Southern 
Unionists, was that the Union had no Will and 
had no right to assert itself against its destroyer 
Disunion. Thus will-less James Buchanan was its 
Presidential ideal. But Lincoln brings Will and a 
united Will into that unwilled and disunited 
Union, truly a contradiction in terms. Hence he 
affirms in his Inaugural the doctrine of Coercion, 
or of the Union with a Will — he has to do so or 
to drop back into a James Buchanan with a 
dual, self-annulling Union. 

In the psychology of Lincoln an interesting 
point is to notice his use of the first personal pro- 
noun in many of his documents, especially in the 
later ones: "Must / shoot a simple-minded soldier- 
boy who deserts, while / must not touch a hair 
of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?" 
Really Lincoln here naively voices the Folk-Soul 
as an Ego or Self, which is his own. Some politi- 
cal opponents have tried to make Lincoln speak 
like an absolutist after the pattern of Louis XIV 
of France, when tlu; latter said Vetat c'est vioi. 
But of the caprice of the tyrant no ruler was ever 
more free than Lincoln; his was an institutional 



520 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

spirit seeking to govern through Law antl Consti- 
tution, even when lie says that "measures other- 
wise unconstitutional, might become 'lawful by 
becoming in(lis]:)ensable to the preservation of the 
Constitution through the preservation of the 
Nation." That is, he might have to violate the 
Constitution in part to save it as a whole (as in 
the Merryman case). He recognized the Consti- 
tution as supreme in its entirety, but he also 
recognized that a clause of it might be turned in 
a political crisis against the existence of the total 
instrument. He never said or imagined, "I am 
the State" in the absolutistic sense; he never 
deemed himself to be the source of the Constitu- 
tion, but rather the Constitution to be the source 
of himself as Executive, though he claimed the 
right to interpret that Constitution in his own 
sphere. Really his natural use of / in his public 
utterances has its deep psychologic justification in 
the man and his work, which the people felt and 
accepted; his Ego or Self had to re-create and re- 
establish that institutional world which threat- 
ened to fall to pieces around him. 

I. The supreme end of Lincoln during this 
Period is to preserve the Union. This is the one 
thing from which all his political conduct flows 
and to which it returns. Undoubtedly other ends 
play in, but they are inferior in his regard; in 
fact they become means at last to the one great 
object — Union. Li'om this })oint of view we must 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 521 

estimate Lincoln's dealing with the slavery ques- 
tion during the war, the purpose of which was not 
the destruction of slavery but the preservation of 
the Union. And such was the only institutional 
way of carrying on the contest. This attitude, 
however, began to divide his party into radicals 
and conservatives, the first making the Union 
subordinate to the slavery issue, the other making 
the slavery issue subordinate to the Union. Of 
course there were many shades of opinion between 
these two wings. 

Moreover, as an act of policy, this attitude of 
Lincoln was very effective. It was the sentiment 
of Un'on by which he held in line the Border 
States and the Douglas Democracy. A proclaimed 
war against slavery directly would have divided 
the North and united the South. And the radical 
Rei^ublicans would have to follow Lincoln in the 
end anyhow, for they could not well follow the 
South. Thus Lincoln, by his policy of making 
the Union the supreme end, practically kept 
the North united and the South divided. 
What Douglas so nobly helped to put into his 
hand, he held to the last. The radical progrannne 
would have brought failure, and have deserved it, 
being really anti-institutional. 

The best rein-esentative of the more radical wing 
of the Republicans was Horace Greeley, who 
through his New York Tribune could flood the 
country with his discontent. He assumed in his 



522 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

newspaper to utter "the prayer of twenty mil- 
lions" for immediate emancipation. Greeley com- 
plains that your "timid counsels in such a crisis 
are calculated to prove perilous and probably dis- 
astrous," and that "you are unduly influenced by 
the counsels, the representations, the menaces of 
certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border 
Slave States." So Greeley would produce a di- 
vided North and and a united South. Important 
is Greeley's declaration "that a large proportion 
of our regular army officers, with many of the 
volunteers, evince far more solicitude to uphold 
slavery than to put down the Rebellion." Doubt- 
less this sentence touches upon a very serious 
trouble in the Army of the Potomac in particular, 
but certainly Lincoln did not create it, though he 
had to deal with it as an existent fact. What 
was that trouble, or malady perchance? Lincoln 
himself recognized it, and tried to cure it, or at 
least to control it in one way or the other, still it 
baffled him quite to the last. 

But in reference to his policy, Lincoln takes his 
pen and answers Greeley in a brief letter which, 
both as to its form and significance, must be 
pronounced a masterpiece of its kind. Let the 
reader note once more the use of the .personal 
pronoun /, and the ])eculiar effect of it as a 
matter of style. Again we hear the individual 
Abraham Lincoln mightily voicing the Folk-Soul 
as a whole against a petty snarling fragment of it 



LIXCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 523 

represented by Greeley. Here is the letter, with 
the omission of ii few sentences: "I would save 
thellnion. I would save it the shortest way under 
the Constitution. ... If I could save the Union 
without freeing any slave, I would do it ; and if I 
could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do 
it; and if I could save it by freeing some and 
leaving others alone, I would also do that. What 
I do about slavery and the colored race, I do be- 
cause I believe it helps saves the Union ; and what 
I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it 
would help save the Union. I shall do less when- 
ever I believe what I am doing hurts the cause, 
and I shall do more whenever I believe doing 
more will help the cause. ... I have here 
stated my purpose according to my view of offi- 
cial duty; and I intend no modification of my oft- 
expressed personal wish that all men everywhere 
could be free." 

This letter bears the date of August 22, 1862, 
while the great resurgence of the Confederate 
arms was rolling Northward, both in the East and 
West and pushing the battle-Hne back to the Po- 
tomac and Ohio rivers, with the threat of invading 
the Free States and of making them the theater 
of the war. Lincoln had already written his 
Proclamation of Emancipation, but was waiting 
for a favorable time to issue it to the public. He 
says in this letter that he will use slavery as a 
means for [)reserving the Union. Note that he 



524 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

discriminates between his personal wish "that all 
men could be everywhere free," and his sworn 
Constitutional duty — the sign of the institutional 
man. Remarkable too is the composition of this 
letter with its geometric order .and precision of 
sentences — antithetic and apothegmatic. But the 
supreme fact of it is the Primacy of the Union, 
now uttered against Northern extremists, and not 
against Southern disunionists, as was the first In- 
augural . 

II. We are now led to inquire, what is this 
Union which Lincoln places so decidedly first in 
importance? It means, of course, a reunited in- 
stead of a divided nationality, one instead of two 
or many. It is evident that the South is ready to 
break up the old State and to make several States 
out of it, while the North proposes to resist such 
a separative tendency, and even to strengthen the 
previous oneness. Thus two opposite phases of 
political consciousness have arisen, the unitary 
and the divisive, and are contending for mastery. 
This is the fundamental fact of the time, whose 
problem is calling impressively for solution. 

The mind queries: cannot the end of human 
government be attained as well by a cluster of 
independent States as by a single fcderatc^l State? 
The South says yes, the North says no Who or 
what is to decide? Both parties appeal to war, or 
in religious speech, to the God of Battles, who is 
conceived by both to be over both, or the su- 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 525 

preme arbiter of the contest. Each is or claims to 
be a Nation, and thus each recognizes and invokes 
a common Power above the Nation as the World- 
Judge who has at last to make the decision. 

At once our thought proceeds to grapple this 
highest Justiciary who holds appellate jurisdiction 
over the Nations, all of them, and has held it 
since the beginning of History. In this book of 
ours we have sought to keep him in mind and 
have endowed him with a special name, the World- 
Spirit, to whose tribunal all national events are 
ultimately referred for adjudication. Moreover, 
he works through men, especially through the 
Great Man of the Age, who becomes the mouth- 
piece as well as the executor of these supreme be- 
hests. Performing this function we have repeat- 
edly noted Lincoln. And we have to add, for the 
completion of the thought, that this World-Spirit 
has an end in its judgment of Nations — which end 
is to bring forth the supreme political institution, 
the universal State, for making freedom actual. 
According to this test each particular Nation is 
judged and takes its place in the institutional ev- 
olution of History. 

And now the question arises: Which is the 
higher principle, that of the North or of the South, 
in the view of the World-Spirit? Which repre- 
sents better the movement toward the universal 
State with its actualized freedom? The South is 
bringing forth a division of the one Federal Union 



526 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

into two or more governments of the same kind, 
that is, repubhcan; the one repubhc hitherto is 
to become many repubUcs, as in South America, 
which therein reproduces the governmental multi- 
phcity of Europe, Evidently, then, secession 
means the relapse to the political form which 
dominates European History, from the ancient 
Greek City-State to the modern Nation-State. 
Euroije is now and always has been since its his- 
toric beginning a Polyarchy, as we have elsewhere 
named it (see our European History, p. 17, et 
passim) , a group of separate independent States, 
always fighting or getting ready to fight one 
another. The Federal Union as organized by the 
Constitution distinctly overcame and transcended 
the separative, mutually colliding stage of Poly- 
archic Europe through its principle of federation, 
which joins together the individual States, yet Justus 
therein preserves and secures their separate 
indiA'iduality. The American Union, from this 
point of view, is the new and higher })olitical norm 
which the World-Sjjirit. has evolved in unfolding 
toward its end . The well-known American motto 
is E pluribus unum, one made out of many, while 
Europe is many made out of one, and this what 
the South i^roposes to do through secession and 
separation. 

The Southern principle, therefore, runs counter 
to the ongoing movement of the World's History; 
it is a relapse to a i)receding and less developed 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 527 

political condition; it reverses the wheels of 
progress and goes backward to an historic stage 
which the Federal Union has transcended or at 
least has begun to transcend. Of course there is 
no intention here to disparage Europe, which cer- 
tainly had a higher culture than any part of the 
newly discovered Western Continent. Still we 
affirm that its political system was an earlier form, 
and really less developed in the sweep of universal 
History, than the federal system of the United 
States . We may divide the world-historical move- 
ment up to date into three main ever-advancing 
stages — Oriental, European, and Occidental or 
American; Europe with its separative Polyarchy 
is the second stage, while America with its Union 
through federation is the third, and so far the last. 
And now we are to see what all this has to do 
with Lincoln. He has become the supreme repre- 
sentative of this Federal Union in its most peril- 
ous crisis, w^hen it must take a step forward into a 
new and higher form of itself, or must drop back- 
ward into some phase of the European Polyarchy . 
It is Lincoln more than any other leader who re- 
establishes and 'transforms the American Fetleral 
system when it had become decadent under the 
later Southern statesmanship . It is he who makes 
the old Double Union with its dualism of Free- 
States and Slave-States into a single homogeneous 
Union as to freedom. He will not permit Amer- 
ica to be Europeanized politically, thoii.!.:;li all 



528 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD 

Americans recognize gratefully their European 
origin. But they must advance to the possession 
of their new historic heritage, which is not Poly- 
archic, but Federative through a Constitution. 
Europe is, indeed, a Polyarchy of monarchies 
mainly, while the trend of the South was turned 
toward a Polyarchy of republics, two or more. 
The Southerners could not be called monarchists, 
they were in their way, doubtless, as good repub- 
licans as the Northerners : but that was not the 
issue before the Tribunal of the World's History. 
The issue was secession, separation, Polyarchy, 
even though this might be a Polyarchy of repub- 
lics. We may well think that the World-Spirit or 
the presiding Genius over total History had laid 
the burden of upholding and realizing its third 
great stage upon the Unionists, whose supreme 
representative and protagonist was Lincoln, who 
must keep them from the grand relapse, free them 
from slavery the separator, and finally transform 
the Union itself. 

Lincoln was, therefore, a world-historical char- 
acter in the great sense, and thus we must grasp 
him at his highest. Lhidoubtedly he was national, 
intensely so, but Nations, rspecially in thtsir 
bloom, are the bearers and executors of the World- 
Spirit. It is at this point that we may catch the 
full meaning of * Lincoln's stress upon the Union. 
This was, indeed, of great economic advantage to 
the })eople, and otherwise brought many blessings 



LINCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE 520 

in its train; still the summation of all its merits 
and virtues lay in the fact that it was the culmi- 
nation of universal History, so far as this has yet 
unfolded. 

It may be added that Greeley had no con- 
sciousness of the world-historical place of the 
Union, and hence he could not at all appreciate 
the deepest motive of Lincoln, and indeed, of the 
war itself. The two men united in a common 
hostility to slavery, but Greeley had almost no 
institutional sense, which was the saving attribute 
of Lincoln. Over and over again during the war 
the utterances of Greeley, though not consistent 
always, could only be called those of an anti- 
slavery disunionist, and thus showed a very deep 
point of agreement with the pro-slavery disunion- 
ist. Now Lincoln's great call was to vindicate 
the Union, not merely as national but also as 
world-historical; so he had to meet and put down 
disunionism of both kinds, anti-slavery and pro- 
slavery. Northern and Southern, Greeley and Jef- 
ferson Davis. The former was chiefly accoin- 
plished by the word of Lincoln (witness the fore- 
going letter), the latter by his deed. At the same 
time he declared he would lay hands on sliivery 
as a means for preserving the Union — which was 
also a kind of notice to the pro-slavery Unionists 
of the Border States to get ready to take the step 
with him. 

in. The thoughtful reader will not fail to ask, 

34 



530 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

How far was Lincoln conscious of his place in the 
World's History? Not once but many times he 
speaks of the Civil War as a struggle for the exist- 
ence of popular Government universally. If a 
minority can rise up and nullify the Will of the 
People constitutionally expressed, that is the end 
of their rule forever. And this loss is not merely 
confined to America, but will be the failure of "a 
great promise to all the j^eople of the World to all 
time to come" — a defeat not only national but also 
world-historical. The same thought we hear in 
the conclusion of the Gettysburg speech, "that 
government of the People, by the People, for the 
People, shall not perish from the earth." So Lin- 
coln always appealed mightily to the Folk-Soul to 
defend its inheritance of the ages, its institutional 
freedom through the Union and Constitution, as a 
boon for all coming time . And the response never 
failed to rise at the call. 

Still the People, the Nation, the Folk-Soul, was 
but one side or element of the great historic proc- 
ess of the time. What was the other? In this 
connection may be cited a passage from the first 
Inaugural: "In our present differences (between 
North and South) is either party without faith of 
being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Na- 
tions with His eternal truth and justice, be on 
your side of the North, or on yours of the South, 
that truth and that justice will surely prevail by 
the judgment of this great tribunal of the Ameri- 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 531 

can Peopl(>. " Here are first to be noted the two 
elements: ''the Ahnighty Ruler of Nations" on this 
part and "the American People" on the other. 
Such is Lincoln's way of designating those two 
principles or energies to which we have oft(ni 
called attention in this book under the names of 
World-Spirit and Folk-Soul. Moreover, there is 
also in the extract a hint of the interaction be- 
tween these two energies. "The Almighty Ruler 
of Nations" is the ideal bearer of "eternal truth 
and justice," which must be somehow realized and 
made to prevail through the "tribunal of the 
American People" in the present contest between 
the North and the South. Or we may say, the 
Spirit ruling the World's History, that is, the 
World-Spirit with its universal end is to be medi- 
ated with the Folk-Soul, whose supreme function 
is to embody and to execute the decree of the 
World-Spirit at a given historic epoch. 

But who or what is to mediate these two ener- 
gies? For "the Almighty Ruler of Nations" does 
not in these days directly interfere even in those 
affairs about which he is seemingly most deeply 
concerned, but He employs some individual as 
instrument or intermediary — we shall call him a 
mediator. Now in the above extract Lincoln does 
not explicitly speak of any such mediator, though 
this be implied. But at other times not only was 
such a mediator mentioned by him, but he recog- 
nized himself to be })erforming that mediatorial 



532 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

function. This comes out in a passage alread)' 
cited in another connection: "I shall be most 
happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument 
in the hands of the Almighty and of this his almost 
chosen People." (see preceding, p. 6). Here are 
designated the three elemental constituents which 
go to make every great world-historical process — not 
only this American one but all. 

In this sense we may conceive Lincoln as a me- 
diator, mediating the World-Spirit and the Folk- 
Soul. He first represents the universal scope and 
sweep of History marching through a vast and 
variegated hurly-burly of events toward its goal, 
which may be ideally conceived as the Federation 
of Mankind. This World-Spirit is what the Great 
Man of the given time must commune with and 
realize in his own ]\articular Nation, which he has 
also to understand, knowing what it will do and 
what it will not do. For the Nation also shares 
instinctively in the movement of Ago, and must 
be read}^ to hear the word and to do the com- 
mand of the mediator, who is indeed voicing 
"the Almighty Ruler of Nations." 

Lincoln, therefore, belongs not alone to his par- 
ticular Nation, but to all, to the World's History at 
one of its epochal conjunctures. Moreover, he was 
quite conscious of his world-historical vocation and 
repeatedly expressed it after his manner. Li tlie 
main this manner of expression took a n^ligious 
form with him, rather than a scientific or philo- 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 5;:3 

Sophie. How does "the Ahiiighty Ruler of Na- 
tions" deal with his "chosen People" in the grand 
emergency? As this is largely the theme of the 
Hebrew Bible, Lincoln seems to have consulted 
it more than ever before, perhaps more than any 
other book, during his occupancy of the White 
House. Some have supposed that he underwent 
a peculiar religious conversion, and several denom- 
inations have claimed him as a proselyte. It may 
be fairly said that he did become more religious 
and biblical, but he belonged to no church. Ap- 
parently he was averse to dogmatic religion; still 
what may be called the God-consciousness was a 
deeply active principle in him always, and seem- 
ingly increased in influence to the end. 

In fact the second Inaugural gives a very de- 
cided religious view of the great conflict drawing 
to a close; style and conception are scriptural, and 
citations are taken directly from the Scriptures. 
Suggestive is the contrast with the first Inaugural 
which is legal and argumentative, rather secular 
throughout, even if it recognizes passingly "the 
Almighty Ruler of Nations," who, however, be- 
comes the all-dominating thought after a four 
years' baptism of fire. Jefferson Davis was form- 
ally a more religious man than Lincoln; he was 
at church engaged in prayer for success when he 
received news that he must quit Richmond with 
all speed. Both sides appealed to the same ulti- 
mate authority; as Lincoln says, "both read tiie 



534 ABRAHAM LIXCOLX—PART THIRD. 

same Bible and pray to the same God, and each 
invokes His aid against the other. It may seem 
strange that any men should dare to ask a just 
God's assistance in wringing their bread from the 
sweat of other men's faces" — at this point Lincoln 
stops himself, he will not judge though he has cer- 
tainly implied judgment — really the judgment of 
both sides which have received the terrible penalty 
of their common guilt through the scourge of War. 
The original guilty deed, the jirimal "offense" 
against a just God Lincoln now believes to be the 
institution of slavery, and doubtless also the 
Double Union, which is clearly doomed. Thus 
Lincoln winds up the list of his weighty utterances 
(he was assassinated a few days after the second 
Inaugural) with a theodicy or a justification of 
God in the Civil War, still addressed to the Folk- 
Soul in its own religious dialect, wdiich is derived 
from the Hebrew Scriptures, since ''both sides 
read the same Bible," and are inoculated with its 
language and its conceptions. 

IV. The Federal Union, therefore, has a world- 
historical function, which, however, it cannot ful- 
fil without being deeply transformed. The old 
Double Union of Slave-States and I'rec-States had 
its career which made a Nation, but it could not 
elevate this Nation to its true place in th(> A\'()i-l(rs 
History. Its tendency was to become more ar.d 
more divided, and slavery was the dividcM-. From 
this point of view we observ(> tlnxe main divi- 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 535 

sions: (1) Free and Slave Persons; (2) Free and 
Slave States; (3) a Free and Slave Union, which 
produced also both kinds of States, and conse- 
quently both kinds of Persons. Hence, it was a 
Union which had division within itself from the 
start. Its separative character can be seen in its 
three great compromises, all of which were new 
props to keep it from going apart on the cleaving 
line of slavery. The culmination was secession, 
in which the rift became complete, and the Union 
dualized itself or was tending that way, when the 
counter-movement began which centered in Lin- 
coln as the Nation's Executive. 

The grand turn from Disunion to the new Union 
was the Civil War, which wiped out the thi-ce 
foregoing differences between freedom and slavery 
as to Persons, States, and the total Union. A 
marvelous metamorphosis took ])lace ; can we find 
the pattern after which it was modeled, or, per- 
chance, the germ out of which it unfolded? Mark 
the sweep of tliis transformation: it changes all 
slaves into freemen, all Slave-States into Free- 
States, and the Double Union into a Single one, 
which is Free-State producing only. Such is the 
undoing of separation, of secession, of the tendency 
to European Polyarchy. Still we inquire for the 
germinal starting-point. 

If we look into the character of the Union-born 
Free-States of the North- West, we find all three 
of the foregoing attributes belonging to them and 



536 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

to them alone of the Nation; they held no slaves, 
they were Free-States, but especially in their case 
the Union was Free-State producing. And all 
this they were before the Civil War. And it must 
be observed that Lincoln came from the North- 
West and was endowed with its political con- 
sciousness, which through him largely was to be 
transferred to the whole Nation, It is legitimate, 
therefore, to declare that the Union-produced 
Free-State of the North-West furnished the origi- 
nal and originating norm, according to which the 
transformation of the entire Union was to take 
place. 

Let us illustrate this matter more fully. In the 
Nation as a whole there are two imi)ortant lines of 
division: the North to South line separates the 
old, primitive, colonial States which produced the 
Union, from the new, derived. Union-born States 
lying chiefly in the Mississippi Valle}'. On the 
other hand the East to AVest line separates the 
Free-States from the Slave-States, both new^ and 
old. The result is, we have four different groups 
of States, or quarterings of the entire country, 
which we may specially designate (see our Ameri- 
can Ten Years' War, p. 4'^8), in the following 
scheme: 

1. East-Northern Group — Free States, belonging 
to the Old Thirteen, producers of the Double 
Union, and sharing in its double State-jH'oductioii. 
This Group must be transformed by tluMiew Union, 



LINCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 537 

becoming thus Union-l^orn and freed of its double 
State-production. 

2. East-Southern Group — Slave-States, belonging 
to the Old Thirteen, producers of the Double 
Union, and sharing in its double State-production. 
This Group must be transformed by the new 
Union, becoming Free-States, and Union-bom, and 
also productive of Free-States. 

It will be recognized that both the foregoing 
Groups belong to the old, Europe-born, colonial 
Thirteen, which formed the Constitution and the 
first Union, and made the latter double, both 
slave and free, which doublene'ss was indeed their 
own. Now it is this doubleness as well as the 
double productivity of the earlier Union which 
the new Order has to eliminate, both in the South 
and North. Notable is the fact that the old free 
East-Northern Group must also undergo a new 
birth and be regenerated in their Unionism. These 
States indeed helped make the original Union, and 
hence they had a tendency to look upon it as 
something which they could unmake at will, as a 
kind of contract or revocable comi)act, though 
Daniel Webster tried with all his might to argue 
down this view. But their real reconstruction can 
only come by a new birth through and into a 
new Union, which is no longer double as they 
first made? it. So the East-Northern States, 
though the originals, must be originated again, 
and, thougli free, must be emancii)ated again, all 



538 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

of them undergoing a kind of palingenesis as to 
the Union. Lincoln stands as the representative 
of this work of unionizing afresh even the makers 
of the Union, the Old Thirteen, Northern as well 
as Southern. 

We are, therefore, to see that the conscious- 
ness of Union in the East-Northern Group is dif- 
ferent from that of the West-Northern Group, 
though both Groups are composed of Free-States 
and are anti-slavery. They, as State-individuals, 
had made the Union as a kind of agreement or 
compact between such individuals, and hence 
why could these not unmake the same if they 
chose? It is pretty generally agreed that Dis- 
union was first born and uttered in New England; 
the first disunionist has been pointed out in a 
Massachusetts representative. And the Hartford 
Convention, in spite all elaborate explanations, 
has never yet been fully explained away. The 
old foreign-born Thirteen are to be re-born, the 
whole of them, both Northern and Southern, 
through and into a new Union, and thus become 
Union-born, which fact produces for the first time 
a true homogeneous Union. 

3. West-Northern Group — Free-States, but origi- 
nally born of the Union which in their case is, 
accordingly, Free-State i)roducing. This fact is 
what makes them unicjue among the four Groups. 
Mother Union has brought them forth as free 
commonwealths, and them alone: such is their 



LINCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 539 

original birthright of freedom, which th(^y will in 
time impart to all the other three Groups, fur- 
nishing the prototype after which they are all to 
be transformed. We have already heard Lincoln, 
the West-Northern voice and representative, de- 
clare that the Double Union, formed by the old 
Thirteen, must come to an end. Also we have 
seen him start by trying to exclude slavery from 
the Territories, that is, by tiying to take away the 
double productivity of the old Double Union. His 
election meant that the South should be practically 
deprived of its genetic power, of its State-produc- 
ing power; this probably more than anything 
else drove it into rebellion, which, however, had 
the result of destroying slavery in the States where 
it already existed, that is, of making the Union 
Free-State producing univprsally. Thus the West- 
Northern political norm nationahzes itself com- 
pletely, we may say, universalizes itself within its 
sphere. 

4. West-Southern Group — Slave-States, also born 
of the Union, which in their case is, accordingly, 
Slave-State producing. This Group divides within 
itself during the Ci\'il War; the upper tier (Ken- 
tucky and Missouri) remained faithful to the 
Union of which they were born, while the two 
lower tiers, constituting seven States, seceded, but 
were gradually overcome by the Northern army. 

Such were the four Groups of States, two free 
and two slave, each of them li;ning a different 



540 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

relation to the old Union. But the time has ar- 
rived when they all must be made over into Free- 
States, and the Union must also be transformed 
in accord with the West-Northern norm of its 
own State creation. As the Union produced the 
North- West free, so the North-West must go back 
and reproduce the Union free. This is the grand 
national turn, yea world-historical we may call it, 
of which Lincoln was the pivot, the Great Man of 
the Age, who first voiced the new decree of the 
World-Spirit to the Folk-Soul and then took the 
chief hand in cariying it into execution, as the 
Nation's Executive. 

V. And now must be recorded another historic 
fact about this West-Northern Group : its soldiers 
won the great positive victories for the Union dur- 
ing the Civil War. The West-Northern army took 
the offensive at the start, and largely kept it to 
the end, till it practically overran and held ten of 
the eleven seceded States. It swept down the 
Mississippi to Vicksburg, then whirled eastward to 
Chattanooga, to Savannah, then turned northward 
toward Virginia. At last it surrounded Lee at 
Richmond, not directly with entrenchments, as 
these were held by the Army of the Potomac, but 
with an effective cordon which cut off all further 
supplies of men, munitions, and even provisions, 
from the Confederate Capital. The West-North- 
ern Army was, therefore, mightily present at Ap- 
pomattox, though not in body. It fact it was not 



LINCOLN THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 541 

permitted to leave North Carolina where it was 
compelled to stay practically unoccupied before 
the far inferior force of General J. E. Johnston. 
Upon this pivotal point the most important man 
engaged in the transaction, Grant himself, has 
borne witness. He is about to tell what he 
strongly urged upon the President in a personal 
interview at Petersburg, the next day after its 
capture (Grant's Memoirs, II, p. -159). 

"Mr. Lincoln knew that it had been arranged 
for Sherman to join me at a fixed time to co-op- 
erate in the destruction of Lee's army." This had 
been the President's plan and order, which Grant 
secretly changed. But when the first success had 
been attained and Petersburg was taken, ''I no 
longer had any object in concealing from the Pres- 
ident all my movements and the objects I had in 
view. ... I told him that I had been very 
anxious to have the eastern armies vanquish their 
old enemy who had so long resisted all their re- 
peated and gallant attempts to subtlue them or 
drive them from the Capital." Here Grant ac- 
knowledges the failure of the East-Northern army 
in all its offensive campaigns, his own included, 
perhaps unconsciously. He goes on: "The West- 
ern armies had been in the main successful until 
they had conquered all the territory from the 
Mississippi River to the State of North Carolina 
and were now almost ready lo knock at the back- 
door of Richmond, asking admittance. I said to 



542 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

him that if the Western armies should even be upon 
the field, operating against Riclimond and Lee, 
the credit would be given them for the capture 
by politicians and non-combatants from the sec- 
tion of country which those troops hailed from." 
We have to imagine liincoln's suppressed humor 
at the statement having a little secret tilt all to 
itself: Rather hard on me. General, who am a 
compound of all three of these rather reprehensible 
objects — a politician, a Westerner, and a non- 
combatant. But Grant continues quite oblivious 
of Lincoln' s quizzical smile: "It might lead to 
disagreeable bickerings between members of Con- 
gress of the East and those of the West in some of 
their debates . Western members might be throw- 
ing it up to members of the East that in the sup- 
pression of the rebellion they were not able to cap- 
ture an army. . . but had to wait until the 
Western armies had conquered all the territory 
south and west of them, and then come on and 
help them capture the only army they had been 
engaged with." One might query whether those 
intrusive Westerners were not already ''knocking 
at the back door of Richmond," with Sherman in 
North Carolina, with Thomas at Knoxvillc, and 
with Stoneman making for Lynchburg . At any 
rate "the Western armies should not be permitted 
to be even upon the field." Still Grant was right, 
he expressed the scnsitiicness of the East-Northern 
army under his coinniand, a feeling of deep dissat- 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 543 

isfactioii with itself which it was well to remove as 
far as possible before iho end of the war. Such 
was Grant's spoken motive, but he had another 
unspoken one, at least not mentioned in his ac- 
count. 

Very little does Grant say about Lincoln in 
this matter, simply reporting him to declare that 
he "had never thought of it before," and that 
''he did not care where the aid came from, so 
the work was done." He assented to Grant's 
change of programme, which was to keep at a 
distance "the Western armies," for these were cer- 
tain to get the whole credit of capturing Lee if 
they were even on the field. Here the student 
of Lincoln has again to supply what that infin- 
itely humorous and kindly spirit was thinking 
about. For Lincoln must have at once penetrated 
the unspoken motive of Grant, since it lay not 
far from the surface, and, when he was again 
alone, he could not help having a little voiceless 
colloquy with himself: Yes, my dear General, I 
hope you will at the very last tug be able to lead 
that courageous and devoted East-Northern army 
to one positive victory, different from its two de- 
fensive victories, Antietam and Gettysburg. I 
have been trying to get that out of it for four 
years, hitherto without success, whatever be the 
cause. And you, personally. General, I hope you 
will redeem yourself from the record of the bat- 
tles of the Wilderness, Cold IIarl)()r. the mine of 



544 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

Petersburg, and add a new surrender to those of 
Fort Donelson and Vicksburg, completing the 
triple crown of your triumphs. 

The reader still to-day cannot help supplying 
this unspoken motive to Grant's narrative, and 
certainly Lincoln must have thought of it, since 
it pertained to a matter which had given him 
the greatest anxiety during the recent months. 
Will Grant also fail with that East-Northern 
army? Grant's military career, in fact his whole 
life, consists of a succession of mighty ups and 
downs, of colossal ascents and descents, having a 
tendency to describe a series of huge parabolas, 
winding up in that last rapid rise to Appomattox. 

VI. Grant adds, after giving the cited account a 
little comment of his own: "I never expected any 
such bickering as I have indicated, between the sol- 
diers of the two sections," but only between pohtic- 
iansand non-combatants {Memoirs^ 11,461, written 
probably about twenty years after the War). Yet 
the returned ''soldiers of the two sections," or rather 
of the two armies, have certainly not failed to en- 
gage in "bickerings" or animated discussions, 
which have sometimes reached the point of caus- 
ing a loss of temper in one or both of the disput- 
ants. In fact to-day the Western soldier, full of 
the history of the conflict and its problems, can 
hardly meet an Eastern veteran and get to know 
him fairly well without asking him: "Tell me, 
comrade, what in your opinion was the nuiUcr 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 545 

with the Army of the Potomac? It is the 
greatest mystery of the War to my mind ; I have 
been putting that question or a similar one to its 
veterans for more than forty years, and have re- 
ceived a hundred different answers, besides those 
contained in books, and I am still puzzled. For 
instance I cannot make up my mind whether 
McClellan hypnotized the Army or the Army 
hypnotized McClellan, who was a bold, aggressive 
soldier, always ready to seize the initiative, up 
to the time when he took command of it. And 
the confession will have to be made that Grant 
went with it into his deepest eclipse, even if he 
emerged again. The soldiers of that Army were 
certainly as brave, as devoted as those of the 
West, and were better disciplined; and in the 
ability to get on their legs again for a fresh fight 
after defeat upon defeat they stand unparalleled 
in history, I beheve. But so much the more unac- 
countable becomes their career; the psychology of 
the Army of the Potomac remains to me the mys- 
tery of the War." 

In answer to the veteran dozens of reasons 
might be and have been given, such as incompe- 
tency of the commanding generals, incompetency 
of the authorities" at Washington, bad strategy, 
undue political interference, and so on through the 
whole gamut of blame. Some and perhaps most 
of these censures have their justice; still the prob- 
lem seems unsolved and insoluble. But the interest 

35 



546 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

for us now is that Lincoln had the burden of this 
problem weighing him down for quite four years, 
almost without relief till the very last days of 
his life. Whatever may have been to his mind 
the source of the trouble, he kept silent about it. 
Still, as he was a deep thinker, he could not help 
having his view, which must at times have indi- 
rectly escaped him in spite of his secrecy. So we 
scrutinize his words and acts to see if we cannot 
find a possible indication of his opinion. 

In this connection we may cite some documents 
which stop the reader rather startlingly, and 
throw him into a long and deep meditation, when 
he comes upon them in the Works of Lincoln 
(Nicolay & Hay, II, p. 241). Lincoln had been 
informed that an officer of the Army of the Po- 
tomac, Major John J. Key, had been asked ''Why 
was not the rebel army bagged immediately after 
the battle near Sharpsburg?" Whereupon Major 
Key made the following reply: ''That is not the 
game. The object is that neither army shall get 
much the advantage of the other, that both 
shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, 
when we will make a compromise and save 
slaveiy." The President summoned the officer 
into his immediate presence, the statement was 
proved and indeed not denied by the officer, when 
Lincoln endorsed upon it the following thunder- 
bolt: "In my view it is wholly inadmissible for any 
gentleman holding a military commission from tlic 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 547 

United States to utter such sentiments as Major 
Key is within proved to have done. Therefore 
let Major John J. Key be forthwith dismissed from 
the military service of the United States." This 
seems, on the face of it, the harshest if not the 
most arbitrary act recorded of Lincoln. That he 
should treat with such severity a few careless 
words dropped at random in private conversation 
and reported to him, is so contraiy to his ordi- 
nary kindly nature that he must have felt some 
deep provocation, as well as some strong neces- 
sity of making an example. Of course the dis- 
missed officer sought to have the stigma removed 
by being restored to his rank. His request calls 
from Lincoln the following statement: 

"I had been brought to fear that there was a 
class of officers in the army, not very incon- 
siderable in numbers, who were playing a game 
to not beat the enemy when they could, on some 
peculiar notion of saving the Union; and when 
you were proved to me in your own presence 
to have avowed yourself in favor of the game, and 
did not attempt to controvert the proof, I dis- 
missed you as an example and a warning to 
that supposed class." 

The date of Major Key's dismissal is September 
27th, 1862, some ten days after the battle of An- 
tictam, when McClellan with not far from 30,000 
fresh troops had refused to pursue Lee, but had 
let him escape with his booty across the Potomac. 



548 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

What was the matter? A profound distrust-seized 
the country, which felt the "game" alluded to 
above. Greeley already had referred to it in his 
letter previously cited . But chiefly upon Lincoln 
crept a gnawing, never-ceasing anxiety in regard 
to the defenders of the seat of Government. 
There is no doubt that a deep-seated malady had 
entered that organism known as the Army of the 
Potomac. Lincoln's diagnosis of it is at least 
suggested in his reason for the dismissal of Major 
Key. Also in the same case he administered a 
little dose of medicine for the cure of the disease. 
Finally he had to strike at what he and many 
others deemed the head of the trouble; he re- 
moved McClellan from command, to whom, how- 
ever, the army remained devoted, antl who was 
and continued to be its ideal chief. After him it 
evolved no general equal to him; in fact its 
commanders seem to have been patterned after 
him, lesser McClellans. Finally Lincoln in despair 
placed over it a leader who had been developed in 
the West. But did even Grant transform the 
inner character of that army? Rather were there 
not signs of its transforming him? 

McClellan says in his book that, on hearing of 
his removal, "many were in favor of my refusing 
to obey the order and of marching on Washington 
to take possession of the Government." These were 
undoubtedly the people to whom Lincoln alludes 
as "a class of officers in the army, not very incon- 



LINCOLX THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 549 

siderable in numbers, who were playing a game" 
like that mentioned by Major Key. Of course 
this meant the subordination of the civil to the 
military branch of Government. Such a con- 
sciousness was deeply implanted in McClcllan, as 
we see both by his words and actions, and he or- 
ganized it into his army, which of course must 
have been capable of taking such an impress. The 
next year at Gettysburg a rumor ran through the 
embattled ranks that McClellan had been recalled 
and was in conmiand ; many a survivor of that 
bloody conflict will tell how the soldiers felt their 
ardor renewed at the thought of fighting under 
their old commander. 

It is evident that McClellan and his East-North- 
ern Ai'my were contending for the old Double 
Union, which had to be restored, in their view, with 
slavery. And therein they were not unlike the 
States whence they came, the free Common- 
wealths of the original Thirteen which had helped 
to make the old Union double, both slave and 
free. The new Union as Free-State producing, 
was not theirs or their political consciousness, 
even if they may have voted for Lincoln. Cer- 
tainly they had no principle or power in them for 
conquering the South. If Lee, moving northward, 
passed a certain line of division, he was beaten 
back; if the East-Northern Army, moving south- 
ward, passed what was i)ractically that same line 
of division, it was defeated. The blootly seesaw 



550 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

continued four years upon the same small piece of 
territory between Washington and Richmond; 
neither side could conquer the other, though each 
could and did repel the other defensively. The 
line of separation became fixed between the two 
armies; the logic of the situation could only be 
that the Union was dissolved, as far as they were 
concerned. And as that was the object of the 
secessionists , the victory belonged to the South. 

History demands that these things be said now, 
in spite of a certain sensitiveness not yet out- 
grown, if we wish to grasp the real sweep and 
meaning of our Civil War, doubtless the most im- 
portant event of the century from the world- 
historical viewpoint. To the Old North and to 
the Old South the Union was something which 
they had made and could again unmake, was an 
agreement from which either could withdraw at 
will; their two armies after much fighting had 
practically proved the same proposition, and had 
drawn in blood over and over again the line of 
separation. But how about the new States of 
the West? The Union in their case was something 
which they had not made but which had made 
them, and so could not be their compact, even if 
it were a compact to the East. To them the 
Union was politically genetic, was State-producing, 
and not the product of States ; hence in the West 
the Union took a different, yea, opposite character 
to what it had in the East. Moreover, the West 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 551 

showcnl its productive power in the matter of 
leadership, both poHtical and mihtary. Leaving 
out Lincohi as the exception of all exceptions, 
there would seem to be something significant in 
the fact that the four greatest generals of the 
Northern cause were developed in and by the 
Western Army — Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, 
Thomas. Small power of evolving great captains 
was shown by the Army of the Potomac, though 
many trials were made, resulting in grand disas- 
ters. The really creative principle of the whole 
war, that the Union must be productive of the 
Free-States, and hence productive of all instru- 
mentalities for making them free — armies, gen- 
erals, statesmen — seems decidedly to have had its 
chief source of energy in the North- West. 

We hold, therefore, that the difference between 
the old and the new Free-States, between the East 
and the West, was reflectetl in their respective 
armies, both as to character and career. The 
Western troops, like their States, were Free-State 
producing by their very origin; they, and they 
alone, as events showed, could make, or rather re- 
make, the Union like themselves. So it comes 
that they did practically the offensive fighting of 
the War; their function was to regenerate the 
whole Nation, according to their origin or their 
creative type, after first seizingthe hostile portions 
of it by military power. In this deed, not only 
national but world-histiM-ical, Lincoln was their 



552 ABRAHAM LIXCOLX—PART THIRD. 

leader and supreme representative. The Union 
had made their States free, and now they were to re- 
quite the act and make the Union free. At this 
pivotal turn, trujy a node of the World's History, 
stands the colossal historic figure of Abraham Lin- 
coln. 

VII. The political tendency of McClellan and 
of his army had brought early and constantly 
before Lincoln's mind the great danger of War to 
the Republic. The successful General in the very 
nature of his vocation could not help having 
a bent toward overriding the civil power. Fre- 
mont and Hunter, military commanders, had 
dared usurp a function which could only belong 
to the highest political authority, to the Presi- 
dency itself, in issuing Emancipation Proclama- 
tions. 

Lincoln did not pretend to be deeply read in 
European History, but he did know that its 
greatest military heroes, Caesar, Cromwell, Na- 
poleon, had overthrown the civil institutions of 
their respective countries. The soldiery follow- 
ing its idolized leader had always shov/n itself 
ready to install him as ruler in disregard of the 
Law. McClellan rather boasts that there was 
such a spirit in his army, though he could hardly 
be called a great victorious General. The or- 
ganization and discipline of the American army 
wer(> derived from Europe, which, with one or 
two (wceptions, is or was a cluster of military 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 553 

monarchies. The professional soldier must get to 
be an absolutist both in commanding and obey- 
ing. Still the necessity of a vast military es- 
tablishment was upon the American Nation, and 
could not be avoided. While employing it, can 
we escape at the same time its supreme menace 
to our free political government? There is no 
doubt that Lincoln kept this problem vividly be- 
fore himself always. He had to find a successful 
General in order to win the victoiy, then he had 
to guard against the backstroke of such a vic- 
tory with such a General. Is Lincoln mighty 
enough, after bringing the military arm to its 
highest efficiency, to control it and not to be con- 
trolled by it? Such is the severest personal test 
to which the crisis is subjecting the President. 

General Lee had been made almost if not quite 
the military dictator of the Confederacy, and 
taking as a pretext some reported words of Grant, 
had proposed a military convention for adjusting 
"the subject of controversy between the belHgcr- 
ents." Thus the War was to be settled by the 
two military chieftains at the head of their 
respective armies, instead of the civil powers. 
Grant did not reject these overtures, but sent 
them to Washington, seemingly in order to get 
insti'uctions. The telegram was handed to Lin- 
coln who at once wrote out the following ord(>r 
and gave it to Stanton with the request to send 
it to Grant: 



554 ABRAHAM LIN COLX— PART THIRD. 

'The President directs me to say that he wishes 
you to have no conference with General Lee un- 
less it be for the capitulation of General Lee's 
army, or on some minor or purely military matter. 
He instructs me to say that you arc not to 
decide, discuss, or confer upon any political ques- 
tions. Such questions the President holds in his 
own hands, and will submit them to no military 
conferences or conventions. Meanwhile you are 
to press to the utmost your military advantages." 

A very decided authoritative tone runs through 
this order, which Lincoln must have felt to be 
imperatively necessary. The subordination of the 
military to the political power in the Gov- 
ernment could not be more firmly asserted. Lin- 
coln did not suspect that Grant had any inten- 
tion of usurping a function which did not belong 
to him. Still Lincoln through his own experience 
had good reason to be on his guard against 
the unconscious tendency of the military profes- 
sion. We would have gladly heard Grant's com- 
ment on the foregoing order in his Memoirs, but 
we cannot find that it is mentioned. It is dated 
March 3rd; 1865, the day before the second inaug- 
uration of Lincoln, and must be deemed a very 
significant and timely utterance. And yet, in 
sjjite of its emphatic words, Grant forgot it five 
wcndvs later, when he wrote the terms of Lee's sur- 
render at Appomattox. ITneonsciously he exer- 
cised the pardoning j)ow('r which belonged to the 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 555 

Prositleiit, decreeing that "each officer and man 
will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be 
disturbed by United States authority so long as 
they observe their parole." Quite forgotten was 
Lincoln's incisive prohibition: "You will not de- 
cide, discuss, or confer upon any political ques- 
t'.ons." Lincoln would probably have given as 
good or even better terms; but he was the person 
to give them: ''Such questions (political) the 
President holds in his own hands." Grant in his 
Memoirs is evidently defending himself against 
later criticism in saying: "When I put my pen to 
the paper, I did not know the first word I should 
use in writing the terms." He never thought of 
the political aspect of his agreement with Lee, he 
did not have in mind his political subordination. 
A still greater violation was committed by Sher- 
man in his articles of capitulation for Johnston's 
army, so that they had to be revoked, Grant 
himself so declaring. But nobody can seriously 
think that Grant or Sherman ever intended any 
disregard of the supreme civil authority over 
them ; their person^,! attitude toward Lincoln was 
one of admiration and love, very different from 
that of McClcllan. The real point of the ar- 
gument is that their infraction of the i)olitical 
power was unconscious, unpurposed, a spontaneous 
outburst of their military character and training; 
but all the more it showed the native bent of mil- 
itarism to forget civism. Now Lincoln during his 



556 ABRAHAM LINCOLN—PART THIRD. 

whole term was kept aware of this tendency 
through its repeated outbreaks in leading army- 
officers, but he was able to maintain and to trans- 
mit the supremacy of the political government of 
■ the country. 

At any rate, after having militarized the whole 
Nation for years, we escaped the military despo- 
tism, and even the military dictatorship, which 
European History had so often shown to be the 
natural outcome of such a prolonged Civil War . 
Indeed hundreds of prophecies were wafted 
over to us from Europe, with the one burden: 
Your Caesar is in training and will soon appear. 
But he never came, though he would probably 
have come in Europe with its system of military 
monarchies. A new stage of the World's History, 
wholly different from the European, has arrived, 
with a fresh historic message. The new Hero of 
the People is not to be military but civil — Lincoln. 
Very characteristic is the fact that the chief heroic 
figure in the greatest of wars could hardly be 
called warlike — was a civilian, not a general. That 
simply reverses European History, and indicates 
an altogether different poHtical order and a dif- 
ferent political consciousness. 

To be sure, we did not wholly escape from some 
lesser manifestations of militarism in arbitrary ar- 
rests, in suppressions of newspapers, in unneces- 
sary interference with the ci^'il process by depart- 
ment connnanders of the Northern States. The 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 557 

record shows that Lincohi disliked this tendency, 
and counteracted it whenever possible. The Peo- 
ple also were averse to it, though strongly sup- 
porting the Government. Still the military power 
did enough to show its native character, and to 
indicate the danger which it might bring upon our 
kind of political institution. 

VIII. Very necessary is it now to bring to a 
close this account of Lincoln. In the present Period 
he is the center of a vast swirl of events and per- 
sons, all of them bearing some relation to him. 
There can be no attempt here even to mention the 
intricate movements, both political and military, 
during the War. Lincoln's biography expands 
almost into a biography of the Nation, whose Will 
he becomes emphatically, realizing in action its 
deepest instinct and aspiration. To be sure, he 
still employs the word, speaking to the People 
with a wonderful effect; Lincoln's addresses, 
letters, messages, are the most important docu- 
ments in the literature of War, intrinsically so and 
not merely by virtue of their official authority. 
Lincoln is still the voice of the World-Spirit to the 
Folk-Soul; in fact he is more, he gets to be the 
latter's schoolmaster, putting it under training till 
it performs the supernal behest. Like ancient Per- 
icles, he disciplines his people with his word when 
they are backward in stepping up to their task. 

Often enough have we already declared that the 
grand theme of Lincoln is the Federal Union, This 



558 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD 

Union he will primarily preserve : not only will he 
preserve it but also emancipate it by freeing it of 
i's great enemy which has always divided it; and 
n ot only will he emancipate it, but also transform 
i \ from the old Double Union into the new One 
Union, making the latter institutional. The half- 
a :d-halfness he is to overcome completely, as well 
negatively from the outside, as also positively 
from the inside ; he will undo secession by the arm 
of power, but the greater thing is, he will make it 
undo itself. The seceded States have first to be 
unionized, then they are to unionize themselves. 
Three distinct stages of a great process we can see 
in this matter: Preservation, Emancipation, and 
Reconstruction of the Union. This may well be 
deemed the germinal process of Lincoln's achieve- 
ment during the War. 

1. Preservation of the Union. The first act of 
Lincoln as the Nation's Executive is to preserve 
the LTnion. He is to rouse antl to fortify the con- 
sciousness of the Union in its supremacy over the 
single State. That is his first and immediate task, 
whereby he consolidates all true Unionists, North- 
ern and Southern. He keeps the upper tier of 
Slave-States, and arms them in the cause. We 
may well deem this the primal great i)()litical 
act of Lincoln: he divides the South and unites 
the North. 

The doing of this work and the solidifying of it 
so that it could not l)e undone, occupied him ehielly 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. ooO 

for a year to a year and a half (1861-2). The 
Union which he sought to preserve, was the old 
Double Union, which he had sworn to maintain, if 
he could, with slavery. But maintain it he must, 
if the necessity comes, without slavery. First, 
however, he has to train the Folk-Soul, and per- 
chance be trained himself, to the absolute primacy 
of the Union, and with it the consequent right of 
Coercion. 

It is generally agreed that this first ]3olicy of 
Lincoln won the Border Slave States and a large 
portion of the Democrats of the North. If these 
two elements had been alienated at the start, the 
War could hardly have succeeded. Lincoln was a 
son of Kentucky, and he kept it from following 
\'irginia, to which it was closely allit^l in blood, 
in history and in institutions. At the same time 
Lincoln never retracted his principle that there 
should be no more Slave States made out of the 
territories. And he doubtless still believed his 
more sweeping proposition that the Union cannot 
endure^ half slave and half free, though at present 
his position and his oath required him to say: "if 
I could save the Union without freeing any slave, 
I would do it." The anti-slavery people, partic- 
ularly those of New England, needed a lesson in 
unionism, which he gave them in his letter to 
Greeley. On the other hand the pro-slavery 
unionists of the Border States must also be 
brought to assert the unconditional Primacy of 



560 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

the Union, which is heard in Lincohi's declara- 
tion: "ii I could save the Union by freeing all oi 
the slaves, I would do it." Thus he puts his anti- 
slavery and his pro-slavery supporters under 
training, which finally unites both sides, otherwise 
so antagonistic, in a common purpose: Union is 
first, the supreme end to be attained; slavery is 
the means, it will be preserved or destroyed ac- 
cording to necessity. To be sure, each side did 
not fail to talk angrily, to protest and sometimes 
to threaten; still they stayed and fought together 
with Lincoln. 

If the moral aspect were to be exclusively taken, 
anti-slavery and pro-slavery could never have 
agreed; each thought itself right morally, and the 
other wrong, and perchance fanatical. Moreover 
each side in its excess had a tendency to turn dis- 
unionists; the Northern Garrisonians were openly 
hostile to the Union, and regarded the Constitu- 
tion as "an agreement with Hell and a covenant 
with death." Lincoln, though undoubtedly anti- 
slavery, suppressed this moral dualism and clung 
to the Union, thus saving it and bringing all its 
supporters for its sake to destroy slavery. Such 
an education, however, requires time; but finally 
the hour strikes and practically all unionists, 
Northern and Southern, are brought to take the 
next great step with the President. 

2. Eniancipation of the Union. And now Lin- 
coln has reached the j)oint of smiting slavery as 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 561 

the source or cause of division in the Union since 
its formation. He starts to unionizing the entire 
country by destroying the original root of disun- 
ion. He makes himself Free-State producing, the 
Nation's Executive vindicates the Nation as* a 
whole. "I do order and declare that all persons 
held as slaves within said designated States and 
parts of States [now in rebellion] are and hence- 
forth shall be free." Will we hear in this sentence, 
the voice of the People in its one representative 
Self. ''The Executive Government of the United 
States, including the military and naval authori- 
ties thereof will recognize and maintain the free- 
dom of said persons." From one point of view 
Emancipation is a negative act, it destroys an al- 
ready existent institutional order based on slavery. 
But in the deeper aspect it destroys what had 
shown itself destructive of the Union, which is 
the supreme National object, as well as the new 
purpose of the World's History. Emancipation, 
then, is really a negation of a negative, and at 
bottom is the destroyer of destruction. 

President Lincoln declares that he issues the 
Proclamation of Emancipation "by virtue of the 
power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the 
army and navy of the United States," and that he 
regards it "as a fit and necessary war measure" 
for the suppression of rebellion. He does not base 
his edict of freedom upon moral grounds, as the 
wrongfulness of slavery; he claims it to l)e ulti- 

36 



562 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

mately a Constitutional act, done for the purpose 
of saving the Constitution. 

There is no doubt that Lincohi had given to the 
subject a great deal of thought and had gradually 
evolved into the method and the moment. He 
must keep his ground of action institutional, 
otherwise he would divide his supporters, many of 
whom would not take part in a moral crusade 
against slavery. And there was a still deeper 
reason : as the grand purpose and end of the War 
the idea of the Union must remain all-dominating 
with its world-historical mission. Emancipation 
is not to supplant the Union as the supreme object 
of the contest, it must be strictly kept in its place 
as means. This is a point which still should be 
emphasized, if we may judge by recent histories 
and biographies. Emancipation is not to be dis- 
located from where Lincoln put it, being the sec- 
ond grand act in bringing forth the new Union. 
The first act, as simply preservative of the old 
Double Union, had shown itself inadequate to 
meet secession, ^jvhich must next be deprived of its 
enforced help through slaves. These are not only 
to be freed, but when of suitable condition ''will 
be received into the armed service of the United 
States to garrison forts, positions, stations and 
other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in 
said service." The slave is suddenly transformed 
into a freeman and a soldier fighting for the liberty 
of his race. Later something of tlie kind was 



LIXCOLX THE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 563 

proposed on the part of the Confederates, who 
were at first very bitter in their censure of the 
Proclamation of Emancipation. 

The date of the instrument is January 1st, 18G3, 
notice having been given a hundred days before. 
Emancipation is primarily a negative act, we re- 
peat: the fetters were struck from the slave by an 
external blow, but that did not make him intern- 
ally free. Its function was to smite the separator 
of the Union, which was to be no longer slave and 
free, no longer double. It was a military measure 
to preserve the United-States united. Lincoln 
was careful to put it into its true place as a nega- 
tive violent act of war rendered necessary by the 
emergency. 

But now comes the more difficult problem. The 
States in rebellion are struck down by war and by 
emancipation; breathing still they lie not quite 
dead, though not active and indeed not capable 
of action in their present paralysis. How can they 
be brought to perform their function again under 
the new^ conditions? For if the Federal Union is 
to be truly restored, they must be restored to 
their normal life and political activity. In this 
sphere lies Lincoln's third great effort during the 
War. 

3. Reconstruction of the Union. Under the date 
of December 8th, 1803, we possess two tlocuments 
of Lincoln which outline his plan of restoring the 
seceded States to their proper place in the LTnion. 



564 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

(See Lincoln's Works, Vol. II., p. 442 and p. 445). 
The problem is, How can these States, undone 
first by their own deed of secession and then by 
the desolation of war, be made over again into 
living members of the national organism? Lin- 
coln's way was, in general, that the loj^al citizens 
should make the start, should hold a convention 
which would repeal the act of secession, form a 
new constitution, and abolish slavery. Above all, 
let the question be passed over "whether the 
seceded States, so-called, are in the Union or out 
of it," which he brands as "a, merely pernicious 
abstraction," practically good for nothing, yet 
with the power of stirring up boundless strife 
among friends. 

Lincoln held that a seceded State might be re- 
constructed when one-tenth of its voters in 1860 
should take the requisite oath, whose form is care- 
fully written out by him in the Proclamation of 
December 8th, 1863, which bears the title, ''Pro- 
clamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction." Lin- 
coln held that no State could legally secede, and 
thus break up the Union. If that were so, ''I am 
not President, these gentlemen are not Congress." 
On the other hand no State could constitutionally 
be deprived of Statehood. Congress could not 
abolish slavery in a State, such had been the oft- 
repeated doctrine of the Re{)ublican party. Nor 
could the President abolish slavery except as a 
war measure, which, when peace came, might be 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. niio 

set aside by the Courts. A State could abolish 
slavery within ■ its limits, but could also revoke 
any such enactment. Lincoln saw that the only 
way by which freedom could be made secure was 
through a Constitutional Amendment. Hence he 
was so urgent for its adoption. He lived to see it 
passed by both Houses of Congress and sent to the 
States, whose ratification of it he did not behold. 
Still, the Thirteenth Amendment is the work of 
Lincoln and the crown of his Constitutional labors. 
Here it is: "Neither Slavery nor involuntary ser- 
vitude, except as a punishment of crime, whereof 
the i^arty shall have been duly convicted, shall 
exist within the United States, or any place sub- 
ject to their jurisdiction." 

The wording of this Amendment is essentially 
that of the Wilmot Proviso, for which Lincoln 
voted so often during his Congressional career. 
But the Wilmot Proviso applied only to the terri- 
tories to be made into new States, whereas this 
Amendment applies to the already existent Slave- 
States, new and old. Thus that Proviso is com- 
pletely nationalized, w^e may say, universalized. 
But the words reach back much further, namely, 
to the Ordinance of 1787, which declared in the 
Sixth Section: "There shall be neither Slavery 
nor involuntary servitude in said Territory [North- 
western], otherwise than in the punishment of 
crimes whereof the party shall have been tluly 
convicted." The Ordinance of the Continental 



566 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

Congress has started the production of the West- 
Northern Group of Free-States, which, accord- 
ingly, began before the formation of the Consti- 
tution and of the Union. What part, both 
political and military, this Group took in the Civil 
War, has been already briefly indicated. Signifi- 
cant is the fact that the very words which arc 
used to make it free, are again used to make the 
whole Union free. It may be added that these 
words have been traced back to a report made 
by Thomas Jefferson to the Continental Congress 
in 1784, which report, however, was not then 
adojDtcd. Thus early we note the tendency of the 
American People to be Free-State producing 
through their government. 

Th(^ Thirteenth Amendment has, therefore, be- 
hind it a considerable evolution. Still we may 
deem it Lincoln's own deed, and it is the culmina- 
tion of his Reconstruction of the Union. It is the 
finished side of which Emancipation is the start. 
It completes the three great acts in the drama of 
Lincoln as the Nation's Executive — Preservation, 
Emancipation, Reconstruction. Moreover, it strik- 
ingly fulfils Lincoln's proph(>cy: Tliis Nation can- 
not endure permanently half slave and half free. 
Still further, it rounds out with a cai)stone the 
whole life of Lincoln as the mediator of the World- 
Spirit at a given stage of tlie World's Histoi-y 
with the American Folk-Soul, which has realizt>d 
more adecjuatcly through him, its representative, 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 567 

the Federated Union of States as distinct from 
the European and Oriental forms of Government. 

It should be added that Lincoln's Reconstruc- 
tion of the Union met with much opposition. But 
he clung to it till his death. He knew that each 
seceded State must ultimately reconstruct itself, 
and his object was to give it a chance as soon as 
possible. The obstacles were mainly three: (1) 
the hostility and indifference of the States them- 
selves, though Lincoln kept urging them to act 
quickly before external interference might delay or 
thwart their new Statehood; (2) the military men 
of the Union Army, believing in military govern- 
ment in accord with their character, woukl govern 
them by force like conquered European provinces 
(read his strong admonitions to Generals Ilurlbut 
and Canby about the Louisiana State Government, 
November and December, 1854). But the chief 
obstacle (3) w^as the attitude of Congress, which 
claimed the right of Reconstruction. Lincoln, 
however, stood his ground and was stronger with 
the People than Congress, which knew the fact 
well. But after the death of Lincoln the new 
President, Andrew Johnson, l)rought to the surface 
all the latent conflicts of the time, and there fol- 
lowed the shameful period of Reconstruction so- 
called, which would probably have never been, had 
Lincoln lived. Still his main work of restoration 
was practically saved at last, after many years. 

IX. The regeneration of the whole Union 



568 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

through the Civil War Lincoln began to impress 
upon the People, especially after proclaiming 
Emancipation. In his Gettysburg address we may 
hear him talking to the Folk-Soul, and exhorting 
it "that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain, that this Nation, 
under God, shall have a new hirth of freedom." 
This hints that the old dual Nation must be 
transformed and regenerated. Then follow the 
words which have become the Nation's own 
confession of faith: "that Government of the 
People, by the People, and for the People, shall 
not perish from the earth." Thus the Folk-Soul 
is reminded and becomes conscious through such 
reminder, which is that it is fighting for a cause 
not limited to the territory of the United States, 
but belongs to the whole earth — a cause not only 
national but world-historical. 

The careful reader will note that in the fore- 
going expression three things are stated, and that 
there is indicated a triple process of thought: 
(1) the People are to be governed, arc to have a 
Government over them; (2) they are to govern 
themselves through such Government organized 
by themselves ; (3) the end of such Government 
is the good of People themselves as a whole. This 
gives, of course very briefly, the psychical round of 
American political consciousness, upon which alone 
the American Government can be based, and of 
which it is the supreme institutional manif(>station. 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE 569 

Lincoln was the man wlio made universally 
current the expression ''Government of the Peo- 
ple, by the People, for the People," so that the 
People themselves have appropriated it as a defi- 
nition of their own political institution. But it 
was uttered long before Lincoln spoke it at Gettys- 
burg; in fact he seems almost to cite it as something 
well known. And it certainly was well known to 
lawyers. For it is contained in a very famous 
decision by the greatest of American Jurists, 
Chief Justice Marshall, who uses (in McCulloch vs. 
Maryland) the following statement: "It is the 
Government of all; its powers are delegated by 
all; it represents all and acts for all." This has 
the thought, though it is not so complete or so 
concise as the expression of Lincoln ; still it has its 
advantage of affirming the allncss or universality of 
the Government, and of emphasizing the fact that 
ours is a mediated or representative Government, 
not a pure Democracy like ancient Athens. This 
peculiar stress is highly characteristic of Marshall. 
In the same decision the Chief Justice gives the 
same thought a somewhat different turn: It is "a 
Government of the People; its powers are granted 
by them, and are to be exercised on them antl for 
their benefit. " Lincoln, not onl}^^ as a lawyer but 
as a student of national politics, had in all prob- 
ability read this decision which is deemed one of 
Marshall's greatest. 

Many years afterward. Daniel Webster, who 



570 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

was an attorney in the preceding case of McCul- 
loch vs. Maryland, employed in the Senate of the 
United States a similar locution: "It is, Sir, the 
People's Government made for the People, made 
by the People and answerable to the People." 
This occurs in Webster's reply to Hayne, a speech 
which Lincoln must have almost known by heart. 
Herndon reports of Lincoln, while writing the 
first Liaugural: "He called for Webster's reply to 
Hayne, a speech which he read when he lived at 
New Salem, and which he always regarded as the 
grandest specimen of American oratory." Possibly 
he found this speech originally in one of the newspa- 
pers of his Post-office Hat. At any rate the expres- 
sion under consideration must have become known 
to Lincoln through Webster, whose fame scattered 
it far and wide, making it familiar to all who 
favored the supremacy of the Union against Nul- 
lification and the doctrine of State Sovereignty. 
In this earlier contest for the Union, Lincoln 
deeply shared (see preceding pp. 152-6). 

From Webster the expression was disseminated- 
in New England, where it became seemingly a 
favorite with Theodore Parker. Herndon relates 
(see Herndon and Weik's Lincoln, II, p. 65) that 
on his return from the East, "I brought with me 
additional sermons and lectures by Theodore 
Parker. One of these lectures was on The Effect 
of Slavery on the American People, which I gave 
to Lincoln who read and returned it. He liked 



LINCOLX rilE XATIOX'S EXECUTIVE. 571 

especially the following expression which he 
marked with a pencil, and which he in sub- 
stance afterwards used in his Gettysburg address: 
'Democracy is direct self-government, over all 
the People, for all the People, by all the People.'" 
Here we have to say that Lincoln did not hokl 
that our Democracy was direct or immediate s(>lf- 
government; he leaves that out of his Gettys- 
burg address and all others. Ours is a mediated, 
representative self-government — a fact which Mar- 
shall's statement brings out strongly, as already 
noted. In spite of Herndon, we have to think 
that the expression had long been known to Lin- 
coln, and to many other people. 

Still Lincoln has made the expression an integral 
part of the American consciousness, which uses 
it as a kind of formula for* defining itself polit- 
ically, and thus becoming aware of itself as com- 
pletely self-governing. Every school boy cons it 
and commits it to memory. Great principles are 
usually uttered long before they become popular, 
and by a different man from the one who makes 
them popular. Often the solitary thinker, sage, 
poet, prophet, jurist throws out the maxim which 
in time is to become epoch-making, Ix'ing taken 
up into the Folk-Soul and thereby truly realized. 
At Gettysburg Lincoln seized the occasion or the 
right psychologic moment to transform an old 
floating expression into an eternal utterance of 
the People for knowing itself. For the Folk-Soul 



572 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

also must become self-conscious in regard to its 
own deepest character and destiny. We have al- 
ready often noted Lincoln as its voice speaking to 
it the behest of the World-Spirit at the given 
time. The other famous statement of Lincoln 
that the nation cannot endure half slave and 
half free, had often been said in substance before 
him. But no speaker ever brought it home to the 
People and caused them to make it a reality ex- 
cept Lincoln. Undoubtedly the time had to be 
ready and the opportunity to be given; Civiliza- 
tion, Progress, Providence, the World-Spirit, hav- 
ing reached a stage in the movement toward its 
goal, bids the epoch-making mandate which the 
Great Man hears and voices to his People who are 
to realize it in the world. 

X. Lincoln was assassinated on the 14th of 
April, 1865. The rebellion bad been put down; 
the work of recohstructing the Union Lincoln had 
already begun, and had carried so far that it could 
not be again undone, though it might be and was 
retarded, and indeed for a time perverted. That 
'prophecy with which the Lincolniad proper starts 
— ''this Nation cannot endure permanently half 
slave and half free" — has been fulfilled, chiefly 
through Lincoln himself. And his entire biog- 
raphy, when -viewed in its total process, gives a 
sense of completeness, even if the thread of life 
was shorn off by a sudden act of violence. He 
died, after having made himself harmonious with 



LINCOLN THE NATION'S EXECUTIVE. 573 

the Folk-Soul and it harmonious with himself, 
yea, after having made the disunited and warring 
Folk-Soul harmonious with itself by casting out 
its deepest dualism, into which, indeed, it was 
born. Thus we may say that through Lincoln as 
leader the Union and also the Constitution were 
able to get rid of their hereditary curse. Great is 
it for the individual to free himself of his ancestral 
taint, but greater is it for the nation through its 
Great Man to perform such an act of self-purification. 
Looking back at the biographical career of Lin- 
coln in its total sweep, we observe that his First 
Period was his intimate life and acquaintance 
with the People, his Apprenticeship to the Folk- 
Soul, as we have named it; but in the Second 
Period occurred his great alienation within and 
without, which he had to overcome theoretically 
in himself, in his People, and especially in his 
antitype Douglas, as the representative of the 
Double Nation — all of which brings him face to 
face with the deepest separation of his time and 
Nation, namely, Disunion. This is what he prac- 
tically eliminates in his Third Period, reproducing 
in the Nation his own inner harmony, and return- 
ing to the primial unity of himself with the Folk- 
Soul, which unity is not now immediate, but 
mediated and restored after long and dee[) 
estrangement. So we contemplate Lincoln's life 
rounding itself out to its psychical completeness 
and fulfilment. 



574 ABRAHAM LINCOLN— PART THIRD. 

It should also be noted that from this point of 
view Lincoln's life is an important illustration of 
Universal Biography. In its way we may deem it 
a typical career for the human being who thinks 
and does great things, who is able to clothe his 
thought and action in the mighty events of his 
time. Lincoln's Biography reveals the inner 
psychical movement of all Biography; his life 
manifests the essential process of every completed 
life. This is the process which the biographer 
must bring out in his writ, and thus at least help 
create the beginning of a cosmos in our present 
biographical chaos. A science of Biography must 
be possible as well as a science of History. In- 
deed, Histoiy and Biography, though different and 
even opposite, are symmetrical counterparts, and 
at last belong together. History puts stress upon 
the Nation and its evolution in events; Biography 
puts stress upon the Man, and, as political, shows 
him mediating the World-Spirit with the Nation 
of his time. 

So we conclude our little book, which, as we 
conceive it, is not so much a literal Biography as 
an exemplar and an interpretation in Universal 
Biography. 



WORKS BY DEXTOX J. SXIDER 

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